Washington National Opera – Wagner's The Flying Dutchman, March 30, 2008.

Kennedy Center Opera House – Premium Orchestra, Seat Z118 ($190).

Conductor – Heinz Fricke; Daland – Gidon Saks, Steersman – Andreas Conrad, The Dutchman – Alan Held, Senta – Jennifer Wilson, Erik – Ian Storey.

Story. Daland meets up with the Dutchman and finds out he is rich and is looking for a wife. Daland invites the Dutchman home and offers his daughter Senta for marriage. The Dutchman is condemned by the devil to sail the seas forever; every seven years he gets to look for redemption by marrying someone who is faithful until death. Senta, meanwhile, is fascinated by the legend and believes she is the woman to save the Dutchman. When her boyfriend Erik finds out, he plead with Senta to marry him. This is taken as betrayal by the Dutchman, so he sets sail again. After unsuccessfully pleading her case, Senta jumps into the ocean after him. The spirits of Senta and the Dutchman are joined.

I have heard the opera a couple of times (on CD), and heard the overture once performed by the New York Philharmonic. So when I found out this was being performed in Washington DC when we were visiting, we bought tickets for the concert. David and Ruby joined us also. The tickets were a bit expensive at $190 each, though.

Placido Domingo is the General Director of the National Opera; he continues to be the general director at the Los Angeles Opera, and I am still puzzled why there isn't enough talent to go around that people have to take multiple appointments.

The concert hall is smaller than I expected, with a capacity of around 2,000. The seats were quite comfortable, with quite a bit of leg room. The performance was quite well attended, although there were visible stretches of empty seats. The audience tended to be a bit better dressed than the New York crowd. We were at the Kennedy Center the previous evening (attending part of a free Flamenco concert), and were worried at how well-dressed the crowd for the evening concerts were; luckily the afternoon crowd wasn't that fastidious.

The sets were not very elaborate. Somewhat on par with NYC Opera – wait, the program notes actually say “Production from New York City Opera.” The ocean is represented by a projection of icebergs in the background. The tilted “squares” were used for multiple purposes (tilted ships, rooms). The moving boats were these riggings you see on these old sailing ships, the one of the Dutchman being in red. I was wondering what the final scene would look like, and was disappointed it was simply images of two seagulls.

The performance was okay. To me the overture has to have elements of ocean waves in it; by this measure the orchestra didn't quite meet my expectations. The voices were all quite strong. The acting was a bit contrived and disjoint, though. I didn't expect to see all these ghosts (scantily dressed women, were they former lovers of the Dutchman?); a bit eerie when they first appeared, but then they became superfluous. The conductor Fricke is surprising short, and Senta is a bit on the heavy side. (Not germane to the review, but obvious observations nonetheless.)

Seeing these other operas make one more appreciative of what the Met manages to do day-in and day-out for a busy season. To be fair, the performance was captivating enough that the entire opera went by quite quickly (no intermissions at that). See the Washington Post review of an earlier performance.