Wagner
Der fliegende Holländer
Lise Davidsen (soprano), Gerald Finley (baritone); Orchestra and Chorus of Norwegian National
Opera/Edward Gardner
Decca 487 0952 131 mins (2CD)
Whenever Lise Davidsen makes an operatic landing, it’s a big event: this time it’s as Senta for a live recording of Wagner's Der fliegende Holländer with Norwegian National Opera in the Oslo opera house.
It won’t hurt Decca’s sales to quote her saying this is the first and last time she sings Senta. ‘It’s a role I was asked to sing for a long time, and I waited because I thought it was too demanding,’ she says. With so many other Wagner roles coming her way, she may not have time.
One of this work’s challenges lies in the fact that it doesn’t take off emotionally until the crucial encounter between the protagonists in the middle of Act 2. There’s a lot of banality to come first, notably much ‘Yohoho’ stuff from the sailors, answered by silly chants of ‘Hum and sing’ from the female spinners.
Edward Gardner’s response to all that – and to the great storm – is to generate massively pulsating energy every second of the way. Gerald Finley’s first solo gives us a penetrating glimpse of the Dutchman’s state of mind, but it’s only when he and Davidsen sing their great life-changing duet that
the drama takes off. No matter that the real subject of the work is neither Heine’s story nor Wagner’s
near-shipwreck: this Dutchman must be suffering from some form of paranoid depression which becomes contagious.
But Wagner didn’t think in such terms. Finley and Davidsen sound like sleep-walkers as they plumb the
depths of their shared predicament, and they are supported by a first-class cast. Stanislas de Barbeyrac’s agonised Erik and Brindley Sherratt’s banal Daland are vividly realised, while Eirik Grøtvedt’s Steersman periodically injects a lovely note of tenor sweetness.