Customer Reviews

Wagner: Der Flegende Hollander (The Flying Dutchman), WWV 63

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I owned a copy of this in the early '60s when it was released in the US on 3 RCA lps. The only other stereo recording then available was on Angel (EMI), featuring Fischer-Dieskau in a recording from East Berlin conducted by Franz Konwitschny.

You paid your money, you took your choice: London's black-and-white Dutchman or FiDi's range of gray. It was Leone Rysanek that tipped the scales for me, along with the superior Decca engineering (licensed by RCA in a brief partnership between the labels).

Those lps are long gone, so it's a great pleasure to have the set back on CDs. Get one of these used copies -- or you can wait, and hope it emerges in the Decca Legends series. Either way, it will be a valuable addition to your library.

Opera's most shiversome ghost story, 'The flying Dutchman' was Wagner's fourth opera, and still remains within conventional bounds - not just in terms of constructing harmony, but in forms such as recitatif, ballads, straightforward arias etc. used throughout.

And yet already Wagner is chomping at the bit, in the way these bounds are strained to the limit. The most exciting moments are those glimpses of future Wagner, the continuous movement of the Dutchman's anguished opening soliloquy; the ecstatic love duet, complete with spacy 'Tannhauser' backing. The climax is one of the greatest in opera, the marriage from Hell, as a standoff between sailors and ghosts is engulfed in a thunderous storm, with the orchestra blaring motifs all over the chaos.

It is significant that the most conventionally beautiful, melodious music is ironically given to the commercial transaction of a love that is is supposed to have transcendant, redemptive power.

Perhaps Wagner's finest achievement in 'Dutchman' is his balancing the two levels of his story, the allegorical one of damnation and perverse redemption through love and death, provoking genuinely otherwordly and spiritual music; and the surface 'realistic' one of the backdrop, the surges of the sea, the echoing vastness of the fjords, the community of sailors and their women. With the exception of 'Die Meistersinger', Wagner wouldn't achieve such a balance again.

This recording is not at all well-known, and despite being a great bargain, the lack of a libretto will prove a handicap. To overlook it, however, would be a great mistake. Antal Dorati conducts as if the opera was of its time (another mid-19th century work) rather than fully-formed 'Wagnerian' (as is too often the case), and this concentrated constraint paradoxically allows the music to break free and overpower, just as the supernatural does the everyday in the opera.

The 'Dutchman' isn't so much of a marathon as later Wagner, so there is little flagging in the singing: Leonie Rysanek gives great sincerity to Senta, a role which could easily be very silly.

This is my favorite "Dutchman". The singers are all very fine in their respective roles. Rysanek is something of an acquired taste. I don't think her commercial recordings really capture her at her frequently awesome best, but she is still a top rank Senta. London, captured before his voice began its decline of only a few years hence is second only to Fischer-Dieskau on disc. For me, Tozzi is the standout in the cast. His richly overtoned bass is probably much better than Daland (willing to sell his daughter to the highest bidder) deserves. Erik is a role that leaves a hole in almost every performance, so Liebl is perfectly acceptable. Lewis' Steerman is second only to Wunderlich under Konwitschny.

I think Dorati's conducting steals the show. To begin with, he plays the opera as a single act as Wagner originally intended. The preludes of the three act version become interludes in the continuous arch of the performance. He also conducts with a propulsive quality that is appropriate to this early work. For example, listen to the Act I duet between Daland and the Dutchman. It's not top drawer Wagner and in lesser hands can sound pretty awkward. Dorati's insistence on forward motion makes the best case for the piece. As much as I admire Klemperer's conducting in general, his work in the slightly later vintage EMI set, which I also own, can make for some pretty leaden listening.

The sound is a little disappointing considering what RCA and Decca were achieving in sonic quality in their joint ventures, of which this is one, at the time. I've never heard the original Living Stereo LPs, but the CD re-mastering has a high hiss level. Minor faults aside, this is a "Dutchman" to treasure.

Pay no attention to Santa Fe Listener's opinion. As usual, he's more interested in being irascible than accurate. His many reviews almost always evoke overwhelmingly negative responses, and I see that this case is no exception. I've owned this recording since RCA issued it on LP in the 60's. I haven't heard any of the various CD versions (it has been available on two Decca CDs - cat#460738, for quite a while), but the LPs are wonderfully atmospheric. Lewis, Tozzi, Rysanek, Liebl, and Elias are all in fine voice and work very well together. But Dorati's direction is the main attraction. The engineers deserve our praise as well. The arrival of the Dutchman's ship is sonically chilling.

Having listened to quite a few of late, I have come to the conclusion that a really good, satisfying recording of Wagner's first real masterpiece is hard to find. If you are prepared to tolerate decent mono sound, the classic live 1955 Keilberth recording from Bayreuth is self-recommending in that it features the superbly vocalised, deeply anguished Dutchman of the great Hermann Uhde and a tour de force from Astrid Varnay. He seems to able to sound almost demented without losing tonal beauty and she manages to rein in her Brünnhilde soprano to give us a mystical Senta who really does sound as if she already has one foot in another world, but some of the supporting cast are less impressive and an audiophile won't be happy. The greatest Dutchman on record would be Hans Hotter in his prime in a 1944 Munich studio broadcast but Viorica Ursuleac's treacly soprano is not to all tastes and the sound, while perfectly tolerable for its age and provenance, is of course primitive.

If you are seeking a stereo recording, things get trickier, as none really leaps out as the best option. I discount two that some swear by as I am no great fan of either Fischer Dieskau or Theo Adam, but I do very much like Anja Silja's febrile Senta which is heard to advantage in what I would suggest is the best alternative to this Dorati set: a youthful, more energised Wolfgang Sawallisch in 1961 with the rich-voiced Franz Crass, an aging, but characterful, Josef Greindl as Daland and an otherwise indifferent cast.

The weakness in the set under review is the rather uncertain conducting of Antal Dorati. He was never a natural Wagnerian and from the slack overture onwards it is clear that he doesn't seem to know how to generate much tension or excitement but tends to take a default position of either remaining non-interventionist or pulling the tempi about randomly. Fortunately, he has stage animals as singers in the persons of George London and Leonie Rysanek. Things certainly pick up a bit when London delivers his monologue and the singers carry their conductor quite often. London isn't subtle but his big, black bawl carries its own thrill; Rysanek's big, hooty tone is really too unwieldy and mature-sounding but she matches London for thrills and is almost as good as Varnay. Richard Lewis is a little throaty but reasonably sweet-toned as the Steersman, Tozzi's neat, elegant bass is almost too civilised for the bluff, venal Daland, Elias is a class act as Mary and Karl Liebl preferable to many an Eric - an ungrateful role at the best of times - even if he bleats a bit.

So for me the most "modern" choice lies between two recordings made within a year of each other, one live in 1961 and the other a 1960 studio set. I do not enjoy Karajan's weirdly low-key, "symphonic" treatment of the score; it is severely undercast, with Van Dam having the wrong voice and in any case being kept under wraps by Karajan's chamber-music approach; clearly any sense of dramatic tension was compromised but its being recorded over two years and Karajan's insistence upon Van Dam playing the Dutchman as an introvert compromising the drama. Both Dunja Vezovic and Peter Hoffmann are vocally embarrassed by the demands made upon them: she thin and unsteady with weak top notes, he bleating and sliding with an exceptionally unattractive, strangulated tone. Neither does Böhm's 1971 recording click (see my review) and Solti's 1976 version in Chicago manages to be simultaneously both sonically overblown and interpretatively rather dull - although I think it the best of the recordings in reasonably modern sound as Norman Bailey, Janis Martin and Martti Talvela all have the right voices - although Kollo is plain horrible, I'm afraid. Since then, as far as I'm concerned, despite a number of new recordings, it has been downhill all the way with nary a voice to challenge the post-war generation of Wagnerians.

Thus, faute de mieux, I return to this or the Sawallisch set. Your choice. (No libretto, although the plot summary is linked to the tracks in the "Easy Listening Guide".)

PS: Be aware that the Keilberth performance has now been made available on the Pristine label in a superb remastering made from the original stereo LP's and as such is now a clear first stereo recommendation.

At least two great condcutors--Karajan and Klemperer--have done a magnificent job with the Dutchman on disc, along with one conductor who is just below their rank, Sinopoli. Dorati isn't in their class, and his way with Wagner is to push too hard and neglect the romanticism and poetry. The Gramophone was looking for nice things to say about Dorati but then admitted that "his decisons about when to broaden out and when to push on suggest that he was a less than natural Wagnerian: and the sound, recessing the solo singers while still losing orchestral detail, show its age."

Of the singers, George London's grainy voice and staunch, usually loud portrayal wears thin despite his commanding presence. Giorgio Tozzi's Doland lacks character and forcefulness. Rysanek comes close to being the center of interest. She has a full, mature dramatic soprano voice, far from the girlish Senta, and her top notes can be squally, but she dives into the role with her usual super-intensity. That counts for a lot, but not enough to lift this Dutchman into excellence.