Bayreuth 2003 New Production of Der fliegende Holländer
Like the other recent Bayreuth production, Tannhäuser, this
is an entirely thought through production by the Director, Claus Guth,
but how did he bring together such disparate concepts as puppet theatre
and Freudian dream psychology.
Barry Kosky's production of Dutchman for Opera Australia (to be restudied
in 2004), took as its premise that everything in the opera happens
in Senta's mind and created a sense of psychological dislocation and
unsatisfied fantasy and desire. However, Guth's production takes this
approach to even greater insights.
As I understand it, Guth's basic premise is that Senta is dealing
with an unresolved Elektra complex involving her father by dissociating
her personality into all the other major characters and distorting
the other minor characters in a variety of ways. All except Erik,
who appears to be present to Senta's consciousness as a real, undistorted
element of reality and is not given by the Director any bizarre actions
to do on stage.
Given my assumption about Senta's Elektra complex, her internal image
of her father (Daland - Jaakko Ryhänen) is exactly mirrored in the
Dutchman (John Tomlinson). They are dressed exactly the same, even
look physically very similar, and have the same mannerisms, such as
cleaning their glasses in the same way. Guth even has them stand behind
each at times, I guess to indicate where their representations in
Senta's mind is merging her real father with the object of her awakening
and/or repressed sexual desire. That is, Senta's father is displaced
into the fantasy figure of the Dutchman she has created from the book
she has read from her childhood onwards.
Since Guth seems to be using Freud's account of our mind's "dream
work" (described in his The Interpretation of Dreams),
elements of personality can be represented in dreams as real, living
people even though, for example, chronologically, they shouldn't appear
in the dream. So Guth gives us Senta as a young girl about six years
old, played by a non-speaking girl - that is, about the age at which
Freud speculates the Elektra complex develops. Senta also appears
in her usual guise. She also possibly appears as an older figure:
the maid, Mary since she is also dressed in the sailor's dress that
the young girl and Senta wear, effectively reinforcing the impression
that they are the same person at different ages.
This splitting of aspects of Senta's inner life into aspects of each
of the major characters (excepting Erik) is reversed with the Spinners,
the Sailors and the Townspeople who are all collapsed into identical
costumes and behaviour. For example, in a wonderful touch, the Spinners
are all mirror reflections of the Andrews Sisters in 1930-40s costumes
and blonde hairstyles. The sing, dance and react like Busby Berkley
dancers - ie as one, with no individual personalities. This suggests
that, to Senta's mind, these women are all the same: conformist, with
limited imagination, perfect and so a threat to Senta's precarious
self-image. This impression is reinforced by Senta appearing as an
overweight, frumpish, clumsy, plain late developing adolescent who
often gestures as if to hide the Spinners from her eyes and ears.
Similarly, the Sailors are mirror reflections of each other and they
move in stylised marionettish ways, also suggesting that, for Senta,
they do not really exist as people because they have little significance
for her inner life. In Act III, when the women arrive to farewell
their sailor men, they are also dressed like marionettish caricatures,
rather like Russian Babushka dolls, and dance stiffly. The effect
of these directorial decisions is to dehumanise the minor characters
and create a disquieting, surreal atmosphere in keeping with the nightmarish
way in which the opera develops.
This scene climaxes in a magnificent coup de theatre with a huge
puppet of death, dressed like the Dutchman - and Daland - diving headfirst
into the scene and appearing to grab Senta and take her up into the
flys/heavens/ death. This Senta is, however, another puppet and the
real Senta stand below in terror watching a dream-presentation of
her deepest fears about the character of the Dutchman - he may bring
about her death - and she collapses in shock at what her unconscious
mind is suggesting.
The set is, likewise, a mirror image: the bottom half (a large mansion
entrance lobby with a number of doors and windows, reflecting Daland's
mercantile success) is reflected upside down as the upper half of
the set. Winding from stage front right across the back of the set
and ending stage rear left (top) is a huge staircase on which much
of the action takes place. The inversion would, of course, appear
"normal" in a dream, but it worked to unsettle my perceptions,
as I wondered what it represented as it clearly partook of the mirroring
or doubling approach of the whole production. It could represent a
literal interpretation of Senta's "topsy-turvy" world, but
it could also represent the Freudian mind with the upper half perhaps
being Senta's super-ego and the main stage being the Id, where Senta's
libido is acting out in dreams its sexual fantasies. Senta moves up
and down the stairs between the top and bottom trying to find out
the "truth" of her experiences.
All of these doublings, distortions, inversions and mirror reflections
certainly forced me to rethink my belief that I knew Der fliegende
Holländer and to appreciate the limitations of the Kosky interpretation,
similar though in initial conception though it may have been to Guth's
vision. If my contention is correct that the production dramatises
Senta's Elektra complex, then all the doublings etc make some sense.
Freud posits that a prepubescent girl falls in love with her father,
but quickly realises that it is not possible to carry this love to
expression in any obvious way. Her choices are then either to accept
that impossibility and find another object for her love or stay fixated
at this stage of development until something else happens.
Guth's Senta appears to be stuck in an unresolved Elektra complex
that is represented by her appearance at three different ages. It
would also account for her undeveloped social skills and her resentment
of the perfection and self-assuredness of the Andrews Sister Spinners.
Realising that her father is no available as a sexual object, Senta
then, in her immaturity, transfers her desires to the Dutchman figure
she has come across in the book that she and her six year old personality
carry round the stage. In this context, it matters not if a "real"
Dutchman is invited home by Daland: in Senta's dream world he exists
anyway. This transference accounts for the Dutchman and Daland as
mirror images: they are to Senta. Senta has evaded the Freudian super-ego's
ban on father love by transferring her emotions to a mirror image
and giving the reflection another name.
Guth has added to the darkness and pessimism of his production by
reviving the original ending in which Senta and the Dutchman do not
rise skyward into transcendence. Instead, the Dutchman wearily, defeatedly,
mounts the stairs and disappears behind the huge red velvet curtains
at the top. Senta, finally, resolving to follow the Dutchman runs
up the stairs and throws the curtains aside to reveal - a blank wall
that she spends the last moments of the opera beating her fists against
in a moving image of despair. It is at this moment that it seems that
all the action has in fact been happening in the mind of the elderly,
blind Senta look alike usually taken as Mary her maid, who sits in
her rockingchair reliving this traumatic experience until she dies.
Guth's radical dissection of the story and the characters was matched
by the sets and costumes of Christian Schmidt and the musical direction
by Marc Albrecht who matched Guth's expressionistic interpretation
with suitable contrasts of musical style with occasionally quite exaggerated
dynamics to underscore, for example, Senta's horror or the grotesque
marionette dance of the sailors.
Similarly, Daland's words are supported by music that I had not realised
must be Wagner's satirical account of popular salon music of the Paris
that treated him so badly. Albrecht was able to give this bourgeois,
conformist music both a sentimental lilt and a touch of menace in
contrast with Senta's anguished signing. Senta's first humming of
the Dutchman story came out as the sound of someone in pain and despair
- an arresting moment. Adrienne Duggers's huge voice, wide range and
impressive control enabled her to match Albrecht's orchestra's huge
dynamic swings that, in turn, helped establish Senta's mood and personality
swings.
Erik, sung by Endrik Wottrich (whom I heard first as David in Die
Meistersinger von Nürnberg in 1996 and again in 1998) has developed
physically and vocally, so it was an easy task to imagine him as a
burly hunter. His voice also matched Dugger's in power and he also
brought committed acting to his portrayal. He perfectly represented
the touchstone of "normal" life in Senta's perfervid imagination.
Tomlinson and Ryhänen were extraordinarily well-matched vocally (although
Ryhänen's is somewhat stronger that Tomlinson's these days) and this
helped consolidate the impression that they were aspects of the same
person.
The Steuermann, played and sung ably by Tomislav Mužek, wandered
in and out of this production in a most unsettling way. He carried
a lit candle and peered into what must have been oppressive darkness
apparently having difficulty in finding his way - an ironic touch
for a Steersman. He appeared neither to see nor interact with anyone
else on stage. He seemed to be paired with Senta's maid Mary (Uta
Priew), who is also blind in this production and hence similarly unable
to provide any guidance to anyone else. Within Senta's dream, a Steersman
who cannot find his way or guide anyone is a telling image of a personality
that has lost its direction and its place in the world.
In Agence France-Presse of 27 July 2003, similar views were put by
the reviewer who commented, among other things, that:
"The young German director Claus Guth made an impressive debut
here on Richard Wagner's famed Green Hill, offering a deeply disturbing
glimpse into madness and psychosis in his new reading of [The Dutchman],
which opened the 92nd Bayreuth Festival.... Guth and his set designer
Christian Schmidt were enthusiastically applauded by Bayreuth's notoriously
critical first-night audience, even if a few boos were heard as they
took their bows at the end of the evening.
"Up-and-coming German conductor Marc Albrecht, also making a
stunning festival debut, directed a strong, if not great, cast of
singer-actors....
"'The Doppelgänger is one of the key themes of Romantic German
literature, allowing you to peer into the abyss of the soul,' Guth
said. And the figure of the Dutchman was a screen onto which not only
Senta projected her secret desires and longings, but Daland and Erik,
too. Guth's is a fascinating multi-layered reading of Wagner's drama,
full of tantalising and constantly shifting ideas and images that
demand to be seen again."
Terence Watson November 2003
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