On Tuesday night time, 4 years after being hailed as the breakout star of a revival of Wagner’s “Ring” on the Metropolitan Opera, Tomasz Konieczny returned there to headline “Der Fliegende Holländer,” or “The Flying Dutchman.” It was definitely worth the wait.
Konieczny’s Dutchman, cursed to trip the seas endlessly in a ghost ship with black masts and pink sails, appeared to channel supernatural forces as he emerged from the bowels of François Girard’s unremittingly darkish manufacturing. Konieczny possesses an instrument of granitic energy and brassy resonance, combining the depth of a tuba with the brightly penetrating forged of a trumpet. He also can cowl his voice and fill it with pitiful tears. For such a large instrument, his assault is astonishingly clear; he inflates a straight tone to a vibrating roar and makes it sound like an beautiful cri de coeur.
Peter Gelb, the Met’s basic supervisor, supplied the position to Konieczny, a Polish bass-baritone, in 2019 when Gelb heard Konieczny’s firm debut as Alberich in the “Ring” that yr. Konieczny introduced uncommon charisma and the Aristocracy to the designated villain of Wagner’s epic tetralogy, and his Dutchman is likewise a fancy creation.
A tragic determine whose stoic demeanor masks a writhing ache inside, Konieczny’s Dutchman rises above earthly considerations however rages with centered fury in opposition to the ever-fresh torments of his Sisyphean predicament. His invincibility has made him disdainful of people and determined for demise, and but he harbors a romanticized fixation upon love. The Dutchman comes ashore as soon as each seven years looking for a girl who can redeem him along with her constancy and break his curse. (Of course, the premise comprises passive-aggressive misogyny — {that a} man looking for a trustworthy lady is doomed to search for her ceaselessly.)
As Senta, the girl who returns the apparitional captain’s obsessive consideration, Elza van den Heever sang with a ductile soprano. In “Senta’s Ballad,” she catapulted into high-lying phrases with power and level and drew her voice right into a slender thread for fantastically fashioned pianissimo excessive notes. As infatuation consumed her, van den Heever summoned the tonal amplitude to fill out Wagner’s portrait of a love that’s annihilating in its totality.
The clear thrust of Eric Cutler’s tenor gave the position of Erik, Senta’s deserted lover, uncommon poignancy. The bass Dmitry Belosselskiy successfully rendered Daland, Senta’s venal, simply dazzled father, as a powerful but silly man who would commerce his daughter for riches.
Girard’s manufacturing — like his recent “Lohengrin” — makes an attempt to get plenty of mileage out of some concepts. It’s lengthy on atmosphere, with billowing fog and undertones of sickly, hallucinogenic greens, and quick on storytelling.
Fortunately, the 29-year-old conductor Thomas Guggeis, making his Met debut, added depth to the ambiance of roiling fantasy. The overture got here alive with stormy eddies and pulsating vigor, at the same time as video projections of a maelstrom and cracks of lightning felt redundant. The strings, particularly, discovered imaginative colours: Their throbbing vitality, unabashed romance and otherworldly shrieks lined the vary of a piece that swings from bel-canto influences to the enthralling mythmaking that may turn into Wagner’s signature. There had been some missed alternatives — such because the darkish timbres that colour the Act II duet for Senta and the Dutchman — however general, Guggeis was a assured, delicate, decisive presence.
At times, Girard’s abstract staging nonetheless appears to distrust the material, however kinetic conducting and a richly characterised central efficiency present that it could merely have been ready for just a few artists to redeem it.
Der Fliegende Holländer
Through June 10 on the Metropolitan Opera, Manhattan; metopera.org.
Content Source: www.nytimes.com