Flights of fancy

Michael Tanner

Wednesday, 3rd December 2008

Les Contes d’Hoffmann
Royal Opera

Der fliegende Holländer
Barbican

London Lyric Opera put on a welcome concert performance of Wagner’s first overwhelming masterpiece Der fliegende Holländer. The Dutchman may arrive on dry land every seven years, but Holländer is rarer than that in London, though Terfel is touching down expensively at the Royal Opera next year. This performance was conducted with the requisite sweep and attention to detail by Lionel Friend, colleague of the great Goodall, and able to infuse orchestral tone with similar saturation, while maintaining the grand line. The Royal Philharmonic wasn’t immaculate, in fact the whole thing sounded as if a few more rehearsals would have made all the difference, but improved from act to act. My strong feeling is that this short opera should be performed straight through, even if Wagner vacillated on the matter. The move from the shore to the spinning room, and from there to the bay, is managed musically so well that to have the extra orchestral passages is irritating; and if a performance is lacking at all in tension, then splitting it up compounds the trouble.

The most notable vocal contribution, by far, was Gweneth-Ann Jeffers’s Senta. This young singer, who was a stunning Gioconda at Opera Holland Park last summer, threw herself at the role and hit it dead centre. From the opening dreaminess, to launching on the Ballad, alternating between the graphic accounts of the Dutchman’s plight to the tender resolution, becoming suddenly heroic, to rescue/redeem him, she incarnated the part completely. The only snag was that she thereby outclassed most of the other performers to an almost embarrassing degree.