Going Dutch

We saw Wagner's The Flying Dutchman at the ALO last night. This was my second Wagner opera and I must say that I enjoyed Die Walküre much better -- it's way more "Wagner" and much more "opera". Still the music was cool and most of the voices were pretty decent. I did not like Senta's voice (Mary Jane Johnson). At times she sounded fine, but half the time I wanted to tell her to open her mouth and give us some more head voice. Maybe it was her interpretation of German or something, but it was bugging me.

The plot in the Dutchman consists of a mélange of dysfunctional characters:

• There is the Flying Dutchman himself, cursed by Satan for eternity to wander the seas until he finds true love on one of his land breaks which happen once every seven years. What did he do to deserve this? One little oath about keeping going while trying to get around the Cape during a storm -- a sort of Little Dutchman that Could.
• Then there is the captain Daland. All happy to be arriving home to see his precious and beloved daughter, right? Yet as soon as he meets the ghostly Dutchman and sees his treasure chest he's all over himself pimping out his daughter to marry her to him.
• Then we have Senta, the "lovely" daughter. She's heard the legend of the Flying Dutchman and has fallen obsessively in love with him and convinced herself that she's the one to release him from his curse -- and all this before her dad arrives with the suitor. Worst sort of groupie, if you ask me.
• Then we have Erik the hunter who's in love with Senta in a weirdly possessive and co-dependent way. He whines and whines about his heart being broken, etc. kind of what you'd expect from a tenor.

To make a long story short, the abusive ex-boyfriend screws it up for Denta, she kills herself (in a very impressive short amount of time, too), the Dutchman's ship goes under and he gets released from the curse by dying (whoopee!) and I suppose the father lives happily ever after with his chest of treasures.

I give kudos to Wagner for the music and for the fact that he can kill off his major characters and wrap up an opera in under five minutes -- you hear that Puccini?