It’s in the first act that Daland and the Dutchman make a deal: the Dutchman’s extensive treasure in exchange for lodging on shore and potential marriage to Daland’s daughter, Senta.
Senta (Melody Moore) is in a classic lover’s triangle with the Dutchman (Wayne Tigges) and Erik (Jay Hunter Morris).Īnother singer appearing in his Atlanta Opera debut in these performances is the dark-toned Icelandic bass Kristinn Sigmundsson in the role of Daland, a Norwegian sea captain and businessman whom we meet in Act I along with his helmsman (tenor Justin Stolz, one of the Atlanta Opera’s in-house studio artists). Similarly splendid was the large Atlanta Opera Chorus, prepared by chorus master Rolando Salazar, which had an extensive role throughout, performing on a stepped-up level. The red-and-black color pairing proves significant in symbolism for the rest of the opera, as the production makes a strong use of such visual leitmotifs as Wagner does with the musical ones.įrom the opening note of the overture, Fagen’s orchestra is especially impressive in this performance, giving strong emotional and underpinning to the drama.
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Tigges cuts a kind of “badass pirate” figure as the cursed Dutchman, whose eye patch and black clothing, draped over with a long red coat, parallels the production’s imagery of the ghost ship itself, with its blood red sails against a black, tumultuous sky. Making his Atlanta Opera debut, bass-baritone Wayne Tigges portrays the title role of the Dutchman, the captain of a ghost ship who is cursed to roam the seas, allowed to come ashore only once every seven years to find a wife who can redeem him through her faithfulness to death. But that rented production, in its traditional realism, could not be more different from this new one, although both productions share three key personnel in common: Tomer Zvulun, who was making his Atlanta debut as a freelance stage director in 2009 and then in 2013 became the Atlanta Opera’s general and artistic director conductor Arthur Fagen, who would become the company’s music director in 2010 and tenor Jay Hunter Morris as Erik the huntsman, who in 2011 received a major break with New York’s Metropolitan Opera as Siegfried in Wagner’s complete Ring Cycle that would catapult him to major operatic fame when, as understudy, he stepped into the role at the last minute when the principal cast tenor got sick. The last time the Atlanta Opera performed Dutchman was in 2009, at this same venue. One could easily wager that if Wagner were alive today, he would be a writer, director and producer of Hollywood films, not opera, and this new production’s attempt at cinematic sweep and theater of the mind plays directly to that sentiment from the outset, with its extensive use of projections and multimedia on top of a starkly gray, imposing physical structure to create the The Flying Dutchman‘s overall dystopian and darkly psychological environment. All three companies share a vital stake in the production’s ownership.
The haunting production will subsequently move on to enjoy performances by Cincinnati Opera in early July 2018 and then by Houston Grand Opera next fall. Coproduced with Cincinnati Opera and Houston Grand Opera, Atlanta got dibs on the debut performances, three of which remain: tonight, Friday and Sunday, November 7, 10 and 12.
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On Saturday evening The Atlanta Opera opened its main-stage series of the 2017–18 season with the world premiere of an excellent, intriguing new production of Richard Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman at the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre.
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