[Met Performance] CID:106060



Der Fliegende Holländer
Metropolitan Opera House, Sat, November 1, 1930 Matinee


Debut : Ivar Andresen, Hans Clemens




Der Fliegende Holländer (25)
Richard Wagner | Richard Wagner
Dutchman
Friedrich Schorr

Senta
Maria Jeritza

Erik
Rudolf Laubenthal

Daland
Ivar Andresen [Debut]

Mary
Marion Telva

Steersman
Hans Clemens [Debut]


Conductor
Artur Bodanzky


Director
Wilhelm Von Wymetal

Designer
Serge Soudeikine





Der Fliegende Holländer received nine performances this season.

Review 1:

Review by Lawrence Gilman in the New York Herald Tribune

Wagner's "Der Fliegende Holländer," a work scarcely known by the present generation of opera-goers, was revived yesterday at the Metropolitan after an absence of twenty-two years from the repertory of the institution.

In this opera of Wagner's twenty-eighth year, we find as we so often find in the early Wagner and so seldom in the later a disconcerting blend of greatness and inferiority. Ideas of superb distinction are jostled by others of unmitigated triteness, patterned according to the formulas and conventions of the period. Would that Wagner might have revised the entire work in later years as he wished to do.

Yesterday's production was an earnest and careful one. The feature of the revival was Mr. Schorr's magnificent Dutchman. In a role which tempts to extravagant staginess and overemphasis. Mr. Schorr prevailed through eloquent restraint. His singing was of rare beauty and expressiveness-some of his mezza voce passages in the second act were as finely achieved as anything this great artist has done here; and his make-up and bearing, with their suggestion of mysterious and tragical aloofness, the sorrow and lonliness of the mask, the rewarding economy of gesture, were beyond praise. An excellent foil was the Daland of Mr. Ivar Andresen, who, as a newcomer to the Metropolitan, brought with him a high reputation as possessor of a beautiful and well used voice. The singer was not at his best yesterday-we have heard him make more of his noble bass at Bayreuth-but he is an artist of the first rank, and he is welcome at the Metropolitan. Mme. Jeritza, the Senta of the cast, deserves praise for her avoidance of the sentimental effusiveness against which Wagner specifically warned his interpreters. Mme. Jeritza conveyed with delicacy and feeling the sense of possession, of spellbound intensity, of taut, clairvoyant absorption, which are vital to the role. Unfortunately, she did not do so well in the music of the part. Mr. Laubenthal was a strenuous and vocally distressing Erik. The choral singing was spirited and efficient. Mr. Bodanzky read the score with inspiring dramatic power and vitality. To him, indeed, and to Mr. Schorr, must go the chief credit for whatever prosperity the revival may achieve.

Photograph of Act Three and Maria Jeritza and the women's chorus rehearsing Der Fliegende Holländer.



Search by season: 1930-31

Search by title: Der Fliegende Holländer,



Met careers
imageimage