[Met Tour] CID:202020



Der Fliegende Holländer
War Memorial Auditorium, Boston, Massachusetts, Wed, April 21, 1965




Der Fliegende Holländer (83)
Richard Wagner | Richard Wagner
Dutchman
Walter Cassel

Senta
Leonie Rysanek

Erik
Sándor Kónya

Daland
Ernst Wiemann

Mary
Gladys Kriese

Steersman
George Shirley


Conductor
Joseph Rosenstock







Review 1:

Review of Elliot Norton in the Record American

Leonie Rysanek Thrills in Met's 'Dutchman'

Like the operas which preceded it on Monday and Tuesday, the Metropolitan Opera Company's "The Flying Dutchman" ("Der Fliegende Hollaender") last evening flared into brilliance in the second act. As a matter of fact, "brilliance" is not a big enough word in this case; make it read greatness. This was a great second act, principally because Leonie Rysanek made it so.

In one of the longest, most arduous and most difficult sequences in all the range of conventional grand opera, Miss Rysanek sang passionately and brilliantly and ultimately with such thrilling effect that an audience of 4600 people came close to lifting the roof of the new War Memorial Auditorium to make her understand how wonderful she was. To have been less demonstrative, less enthusiastic, would have been outrageous.

The second act of this early opera by Richard Wagner presents the heroine Senta, at the home of her seagoing father, sitting in silence at first while her housekeeper and her friends sit spinning, singing and joking about the hunter, Erik, who is in love with Senta.

Begins. Romantic Aria

?

The music here is pleasant, not overwhelming, and the singing of the Metropolitan choristers was the same. Then Miss Rysanek, stirred from the chair in which she had been sitting and began to sing. She sang about the captain of the Flying Dutchman, the phantom ship which silently sails the world till its captain shall have found a girl who will return his love. She sang of Senta's obsession with the story and its hero. When the time comes, she will meet and marry this man of doom, will lift the curse from his life by her love. Senta's aria is long, fiercely dramatic, wildly passionate, a great storm of Wagnerian music which requires of the singer something close to verbal gymnastics. Miss Rysanek brooded into it and in the beginning sang somewhat erratically. Occasionally her voice shaded off key; this happened more than once. Then she began to bring it under full control. Her tones became warmer, then fuller and then what followed was magnificent.

Senta sings continuously, first in that aria, then in a long and fierce interchange with Erik, who comes in panic to tell her of a frightening dream he has had; then, ultimately, with the Dutchman, who appears suddenly and silently to stand before his own portrait near the door. Each song, each aria, each exchange, requires the diva to sing much of the time at the peak of her power in her highest range. Time and again, Miss Rysanek produced her voice in piercing clarity and in thrilling tones. Twice she seemed to falter into vibrato. Each time, she recovered her fullest, roundest tones and again sang in absolute brilliance. She is a true dramatic singer, which is to say, she acts with her eyes, with her whole body and most particularly with her voice. Her Senta is almost demented by love - which is the way Wagner wrote her.

As the mysterious Dutchman, Walter Cassel substituted for George London, who was reported on one of those grim little pink slips inserted in the program as

"indisposed." Mr. Cassel was gloomily adequate in the beginning, when the Dutchman encounters Capt. Daland. But he warmed to his opportunities and to the opera in the presence of Leonie Rysanek, catching fire from her in a duet that might have made Wagner himself happy.

Other Excellent Performances

Sandor Konya had a great part in Act Two as Erik the hunter and he sang with power and beauty to match Miss Rysanek's. He seemed at first a little mannered, given to striking attitudes, but only for a moment. He let go presently to sing passionately and gloriously Erik's love and fear for Senta.

As Captain Daland, the father of Senta, Ernst Wiemann sang well enough, though he never matched the passion of the others. The choruses did fairly well, though the Met's men have a pretty hard time seeming like jovial sailors with their ho-ho-ho's and their yo-heave-ho's.

Under the baton of Joseph Rosenstock, the opera company's enormous orchestra, sunk deep in the Auditorium's pit, which is as big as the crater of Vesuvius, produced the sounds and sonorities of Wagner's score impeccably.



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