Talking Dutchman
A robust discussion of The Flying Dutchman featuring an incredible panel of Wagnerian singers, artists, and fans
We were honoured to welcome an incredible panel of Wagnerian singers, artists, and fans to a robust discussion of The Flying Dutchman.
Join Vancouver Opera’s Ashley Daniel Foot alongside:
Les Dala, Conductor of The Flying Dutchman
Marjorie Owens, Senta in The Flying Dutchman
J. Patrick Raftery, singer, UBC professor, and expert on all things Wagner
Stanis Smith, musician, architect, and super fan
Vancouver Opera presents The Flying Dutchman - April 29th to May 7th, 2023, at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre. For tickets and more information visit vancouveropera.ca
You can also download this podcast on all major platforms including Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
TRANSCRIPT
Ashley Daniel Foot:
Welcome, welcome to Inside Vancouver Opera and our discussion of our brand-new production of Wagner's mammoth, The Flying Dutchman. As artists who work in opera, we are telling stories that reflect and shape our place in the world. And in doing so, we also have a responsibility to recognize the history of this land and to explore and challenge our relationship to that history. We recognize and support and celebrate the enduring presence of indigenous peoples on this land, and it's a privilege for us to be here on the traditional lands of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səl̓ílwətaʔɬ (Tsleil Waututh) Nations.
We are so lucky to welcome a wonderful panel of fabulous Wagnerian lovers and artists and creatives to this conversation today as we get ready for our big night coming up on April 29th at the Queen Elizabeth Theater. If you haven't got your tickets, vancouveropera.ca is where you want to do that.
We are glad to welcome Les Dala, the conductor of our opera and Vancouver Opera's Associate Conductor. We're also thrilled to welcome American Soprano, Marjorie Owens, a grand finals winner of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, and Marjorie plays Senta in our opera. We're also thrilled to have UBC opera professor and opera singer J. Patrick Raftery here. Patrick is here to talk a little bit about the unique history of the opera and Wagnerian singing in general. We also have Stanis Smith, a musician, architect, Wagnerian super fan, and Vancouver Opera board member. And he's going to share some of his own unique perspectives on Wagner's unique and outsize influence on our culture.
So we have lots to get to as we think about The Flying Dutchman, which tells the haunting story of a sailor and his daughter who encountered her fabled ghost ship during a storm on the sea. It's a crazy story of all sorts of tumult. And Patrick, I wonder if you could tell us a little bit, what is this opera about?
J. Patrick Raftery:
Well, it's a very straightforward thing actually, but it's based on some Nordic mythology and mythology of the sea. And… some people have actually said that they've seen the Flying Dutchmen and seeing the ship is meant to be a doom, like seeing the four horseman, like, you know as something's going up. But one of the reasons I think it's so interesting is because, not just because Marjorie's there, but I think Senta is the character that evolves then changes the most in the piece. Everyone else kind of stays the same. But I think it's a story of love, and turmoil, and devotion, and passion.
I think it's very interesting that Heinrich Heine is where the story originated from. And I think that Wagner had his own story with running from people and being lost at sea, and Stanis will talk more about that. But this idea of the sea and the ocean and not knowing who your parentage is and not knowing where you're from. And also the character, like the character in Lohengrin makes an unrealistic demand of the love interest of the woman, an unrealistic request that then really puts her into conflict about how to deal with promises that she's made and promises that she's changed and the kind of sacrifice she's willing to make for that.
Ashley Daniel Foot:
Wonderful! Marjorie, I was just hearing about the changes that Patrick was talking about that Senta undergoes in the opera. I'd love you to talk a little bit about your perspective on that. This is one of your signature roles and talk us through that process.
Marjorie Owens:
Okay. Well, I love Senta mainly because she is trying to buck the norms of society. She does not want to get married and have children. She's an outsider. She wants to choose her own destiny, and she focuses that solely on the Dutchman. She grew up learning this tale, and she's kind of obsessed about him. And when he finally does appear it's kismet, it's fate. Obviously, she is meant to be with him and he is her ticket out of this everyday sort of small town life. And so the opera progresses in such a way that… well… no spoilers but it's definitely unconventional. Her life takes an unconventional turn and I love that about her.
Ashley Daniel Foot:
It certainly does. Les, when we think about musical motifs, when we hear the shark coming in Jaws, when we think about the Wicked Witch appearing in The Wizard of Oz, there's musical moments that cue that, these go right back to Wagner.
Can you talk a little bit about Wagner's unique musical influences that are immediately apparent in this opera?
Les Dala:
Yeah, for sure. I mean, you get them right off the top in the first few bars of the overture, which is just this powerful, dramatic, colorful real emotional ride. And, you know, the motif of the Dutchman, literally just two notes which recurs all the way through.
There's a quote that I found from the composer Franz Lachner, who is not so well known these days, but was a contemporary of Wagner who kind of made the sarcastic observation that the problem with the score is that as soon as you open up the pages, the wind blows at you. It literally is that incredibly descriptive. You get the stormy music with this ba bum da da da… you know, flying around in the strings all over the place.
You get the motif of redemption that Senta represents which is a very beautiful, almost choral like thing. You get the sailors chorus… They're all previewed in the overture itself. That initial theme of the Dutchman, just those two notes I think he definitely got from Beethoven in the 9th Symphony, which has the very same thing happening. Literally, the very opening of it was just an open fifth and the interval is a fifth, and you hear cascading down. And Wagner became super obsessed with Beethoven, got to know his work. So that was for sure his starting point. And also Carl Maria von Weber, who was a little bit older than Wagner, but Wagner knew him personally and his work, Der Freischütz. So it comes definitely from that Germanic tradition.
Ashley Daniel Foot:
Fascinating. Stanis, you have a long history with Wagner and you wrote an essay called Why Wagner? which we will be publishing very shortly in celebration of the opening of the opera. There's no question that Wagner arouses more debate and more arguments than about almost anyone. So I want you to talk a little bit about your passion for his music and squaring it with his undeniably troubled and controversial life and political beliefs.
Stanis Smith:
Well, thanks for the question, Ashley. It's a really tough one. I find that I can admire the art and despise the artist at the same time. I have to admit with a certain amount of difficulty, there are certain creative geniuses who somehow manage to combine both the best and the worst of human nature. And you can think of people in the visual arts such as Picasso or Diego Rivera who have been incredibly misogynistic. You can think about composers who've had bashes, tendencies, or have been collaborators such as Richard Strauss or Carl Orff.
But there's no doubt that Wagner is in a league of his own. And I think that it's important not to gloss over just how appalling he was on a personal level and his antisemitism, his notorious article Jews on Music. Just one quote from it: “I regard the Jewish race as the born enemy of pure humanity and everything that is noble.” and it gets worse from there. So there's no question that Wagner was an antisemite. He was extremely unpleasant and probably not the sort of person you want to invite over for dinner.
The key question to my mind is to what extent his personal values and conduct have tainted his music and his operas. I have a very different point of view on that from the school of thought that says that there are some antisemitic messages embedded in his operas. And they sometimes point to The Flying Dutchman saying it's based on a legend about the wandering Jew who taunted Jesus on the way to the crucifixion.
Now, I don't buy that at all. And I don't buy it because it's very clear that Wagner embedded highly personal details into Dutchman, as was as mentioned earlier, the plot is based on a harrowing storm that he encountered at sea just off Norway. The other personal touch, one of the key themes in The Flying Dutchman, is the theme of redemption through love of a of a pure woman. And to put the plot in a single sentence, it's about a sailor doomed to sail the oceans until he can be saved by the faithful love of a pure woman. You can argue that Wagner not only explored that theme in his operas, but he explored it through his multiple affairs with many women.
Given these sort of autobiographical details, I find that it makes no sense to me to claim that the plot is based on some kind of antisemitic trope. And at the end of the day the reasons, I believe, to listen to Wagner is because he wrote music of such unparallel power, nobility, and beauty. Because he pushed the whole language of music into new territory, and because he transformed the world of opera. I've kind of made peace with Wagner the person, and Wagner the composer of genius. There’s no question that when you sum it all up, while he was a horror personally, he was a phenomenon and a genius.
Ashley Daniel Foot:
Patrick, I want to talk a little bit about how The Flying Dutchman is now considered it's a gateway opera to Wagner's much larger works. Why is this, and what should we as an audience be watching and listening for as we dig in and uncover this controversial work?
J. Patrick Raftery:
I think that when you look at it and look at the time and the other operas that were produced in that year, like I Lombardi and Don Pasquale and things like that, it's reminiscent of… there's an overture that refers to some of the music in the piece, then there's aria pieces and set pieces, and I think the audience can relate to it in a way. But it's really a gateway, for me, because so much of the music is already a foreshadowing of Kundry, and already a foreshadowing of this kind of upside down, if I could make a pop culture reference, this upside down of this world that is the third act of Tristan und Isolde. You can see when the ghosts come in, there's a whole different sound of where they come from. When Eric sings his lovely little aria at the end, it's so reminiscent of an old song with a very old classical structure, and then it turns really kind of crazy.
I think when Wagner redid Tannhäuser, he certainly wrote the music for Venus to be very forward thinking and very much of a different whole tonal structure. And I think we can hear that a lot in The Flying Dutchman but all of the characters are relatable to us. You know, would we, who would we, what would we sell for our own benefit? Would we sell our own children? Would we demand of a person this kind of love and passion? So I think it's a very available story. I think the ghosts are creepy. I think the ghosts fighting with the sailors on land are exciting and these themes of love and redemption just speak to everyone so musically. It has enough going for it in terms of what was happening before, and if you know where Tristan und Isolde went, you can really hear a lot of the music where he was going, I think, with The Flying Dutchman.
Ashley Daniel Foot:
Fascinating. Marjorie as I mentioned earlier, you've sung this role before. How do you get started when you start to come back to this role again and again, and how do you sustain and prepare for something that you've done so well so many times?
Marjorie Owens:
Well, specifically with Senta it kind of fits like a glove. It's one of those roles that feels mostly effortless and those are rare. But when it happens it’s like a friend that you haven't seen in a few months, or like a year could go by, but then you guys get back in touch and you hit it off like there's no time that’s passed whatsoever. That's what The Flying Dutchman feels like to me. And I love it specifically because I love the orchestration and I love how massive it is because I never feel like I have to try and sing over it or I get overpowered.
For me, Wagnerian orchestration feels like I'm being comforted. It feels like I'm being supported, you know, I always get so nervous when I sing pieces that the orchestration is very light and very exposed and very precious. I love the feeling of a full orchestra because… I don't know, it feels like we're doing it together. We're, you know… Gesamtkunstwerk… it's all part and parcel. Like we're doing this together. And I love that feeling and I rarely get that outside of Wagner for some reason.
Ashley Daniel Foot:
Wow. Well, we have to talk to Les about that because when you're talking about everything together that's definitely something that Wagner pioneered, and you used that word, Les. Can you talk a little bit about how you joined forces with Marjorie and the other fantastic singers to all work together towards this common incredible goal?
Les Dala:
Well, I feel very lucky because I can attest to the fact that this role does fit Marjorie like a glove. I remember the first day of music which is always… it's exciting, it's a little bit trepidatious, because you've got people who haven't sung together, sometimes they have. I mean, Marjorie's done the work in a lot of places around the world and I've worked on the piece, but it's my first time conducting it. So I feel very lucky, humbled, grateful, and very excited.
But we walked in and I just thought “Oh man, this is gonna be amazing!” And it's true that the kind of voice type that Marjorie is, and that Patrick has been in his career, is the rarest of them. The kind of voice that can soar above an orchestra of 60 to 100 people. It's the dimensions of that, and that maybe is a great word because, as Patrick pointed out, I forgot that Don Pasquale was written in the same year. I knew it was around the same time, but you look at those two pieces side by side, and you would never imagine that they were written in the same year. But it just goes to show that music and art and everything is pluralistic, everything going on at the same time.
But in Wagner's case, again, he was picking up on late Beethoven. Everything in the 19th century, industrial revolution, everything, it was getting bigger. When you look at… you know one of my obsessions as a kid was Franz Liszt, as a pianist, and Liszt became Wagner’s… well they were very good friends and Liszt became Wagner's father-in-law when he married Cosima. But Liszt and Berlioz they were the people pushing music in every which way. I mean the kind of virtuosity of that time. The instruments were getting bigger. The Beethoven piano was smaller and more compact and less resonant than what happened within a few decades. All of this, I think, plays a role in the world of Wagner where it really is about dimensions getting bigger. Then creating Der Ring des Nibelungen which is 16 hours in length.
A reminder to our audience and as a musician, what I always have to remind myself too is of course we're always talking about music, music, music. But I mean, he wrote his own librettos. He had the entire world of how he wanted it to look and sound. He had an idea for the stage direction. So it's that totality when you're talking about the Gesamtkunstwerk, not just to mention the architecture and structure of the music, but the concept goes way, way beyond that. And to eventually designing his own theater where these pieces could best speak. So it's hard to imagine any, I can't think of any other creative artists in the world of opera, or elsewhere, that really can equal Wagner’s accomplishment in that way.
Ashley Daniel Foot:
Stanis you've traveled all over the world to see Wagner's operas and you've been to the Bayreuth Festival and seen this theater that he created. Can you talk a little bit more about all of that and how and why, and your passion for that?
Stanis Smith:
As Les said, Wagner not only transformed the world of opera, but he basically transformed the world of theater architecture, invented musical instruments, the Wagner tuba. I mean, his accomplishments are truly astonishing. It's hard to think of any person in Western art history who had such an impact in such an astonishing way. And it's almost as if in the world of the visual arts that all of the post-impressionists were rolled into a single person. I mean, Wagner's impact on the world of music is truly unparalleled. I don’t know if some of you might remember, there was an old Heineken ad from years ago.
It was that Heineken “gets to the parts that other beers cannot reach.” Well for me, Wagner gets to the parts that other composers cannot reach. He can evoke landscape scenery like nobody before or since. He could write a love duet you like nobody before or since. So what I'm looking forward to with this production is particularly the act one overture. As Les said, you just feel the salt and the spray on your face. It's incredible! Act two at the start, the spinning chorus, you don't actually need to see anything on stage just to kind of feel what's going on. And of course adding the stage effects just amplifies the whole effect. The end of Act two is the great love duet between the Dutchman and Senta, the very first great love duet Wagner, and It’s wonderful. It’s glorious.
So I guess my advice to anybody is if you’re Wagner curious, Dutchman is probably the easiest entry point into his music. It's certainly the shortest of his great operas. So I really would encourage Vancouver audiences to come and see this very rare treat on our stage.
Ashley Daniel Foot:
Wonderful. Wonderful. We have a few minutes left. I want to go back to Patrick. You've sung Wagner all over the place. What makes Wagnerian singing so different? How do you do it? What are the constituent parts?
J. Patrick Raftery:
I kind of have to mirror what Marjorie and Les said about the orchestra. I was fortunate that I got to sing a lot of Mozart and Rossini and Donizetti and stuff before I changed Fach and started singing Wagner. In Mozart and stuff you feel kind of exposed and you feel, if you're in a duet or an aria, in a way I know there's a person down there working really hard to support me. And in a bel canto opera you sort of lead. But with a Wagner opera, you know, the opera is a protagonist in the piece. And when you go out there and sing the Tristan und Isolde duet and that orchestra is doing all that, it really is like, oh my gosh, we have this, we have another entity in this duet. And it's a and it becomes a real active protagonist.
I found it difficult to learn the music, more difficult than learning other music that was strophic or something else. So it was a different kind of commitment of time and wrestling to learn it. But once I learned it and I also spoke German by the time I started singing Wagner, and it isn't normal German. It's not normal conversational German, it's tricky. So, so in a way, speaking German wasn't useful. It was a little bit like Yoda speaking English. It was like that kind of awkward backwards German, but once you learned it, it was like solid as a rock. So I felt a little bit the same as Marjorie, the physical commitment of time and the physical commitment of your body was supported by standing on that orchestra and feeling the orchestra supporting you. And I never felt exposed the same way as I felt in Mozart or Bellini.
Ashley Daniel Foot:
Wow. Wow. Fascinating. Marjorie, I want to come back to you and I want to talk about some of the young singers who may be interested in becoming a Wagnerian soprano, or a tenor, or a baritone. How on Earth would they begin that journey? And how would they sustain that? And what can they do now to set the stage for success? I know that's a big one.
Marjorie Owens:
Oh wow, okay. When you start out, I would definitely suggest a solid technique. It comes in very helpful for opera in general, but specifically with something like Wagner or Strauss where you need the stamina and the endurance. And as Nielsen said, some comfortable shoes, you know you should just make it throughout the whole opera. And pacing yourself, I would say, starting with Mozart. Like, I started singing opera when I was 14; I was determined to be Queen of the Night. You know, some pretty interesting roles I was determined to try until I settled into what was more like a spinto repertoire in my late twenties and thirties.
But I started with a lot of… honestly, Mozart and Strauss really cleaned up my technique because I had no other choice. If you don't use a sustainable technique, you're going to burn out pretty quickly with those. And the same can definitely be said with Wagner. If you don't have a capable technique, then you're just going to end up shouting and you're not going to last that long. So it does really require pacing and not… I know in my twenties everyone was like “Oh, you have such a large voice!” So I was like “I do!” And so I would try and push and try and sound as loud as I could. Which is detrimental. Does not work. And I later learned to curb that and Wagner helped me with that because you simply can't do that with Wagner. You have to sing as healthfully as possible or else you're not going to last that long.
Ashley Daniel Foot:
Thank you, that's powerful advice. Well, I want to go back to Les. You have had an experience with Wagner for many years and there's a story, and I wasn't sure I was going to ask you this, but I am. Tell us about how you discovered Wagner. You were the youngest member of the Wagnerian Society. I want to know more about this.
Les Dala:
Yeah, so my story goes back to Toronto and high school days. I was a student at St. Michael's Choir School in Toronto, which is an excellent school that has, still to this day, a very strong in particular choral department. So we would have an hour of singing because we had to sing at the cathedral services on the weekend. So we'd be putting together different programs every weekend and the repertoire raged from Gregorian chant to Renaissance motets to contemporary things. So, and I studied piano and organ and violin there at the school as well. They had faculty. So I feel, you know, looking back it was a very rare kind of educational experience.
So I, as somebody who wrote, I felt like I had a pretty good understanding of a lot of music. But it was in music history class, which was also taught at St. Mike's, when we were doing the grade three history exam, which was seen as the most accessible, because it was the 19th century, the romantic period. So all the biggies are in that. And this particular week was about Wagner. I was sitting in the back of the class with some friends and we were yapping, you know, we were teenagers and blah blah blah… And then I just remember the professor said something about “Well this is the prelude to Tristan und Isolde…”
And it starts and you know, couldn't hear anything and kept talking and suddenly you heard this cello with that minor sixth and everything. And then the chord with the English horn and I suddenly thought, I don't think I've ever heard any music like this before. This is just… you know, I thought I knew a lot of music. And then after about 20 seconds I said to my friends “Shut up, I really want to listen to this.” And then I just remember this 8-10 minutes, whatever it was, I literally felt breathless. I had never heard music like this, that starts from nothing, that has this kind of rich chromatic language that I had not yet come across.
And at the end of that class, I just wanted to get to know everything about Wagner. So I rushed to the library and we happened to have a decent one. They had some cassette tapes and things and some books. I kind of became obsessed and it happened to be that actually that year the Canadian Opera Company was doing Tristan und Isolde a few months later. So I went to see it twice, and then I just thought “I gotta go full, full in on this.”
And I saw that in the program there was an ad for the Toronto Wagner Society and they were looking for members. And I thought “Oh, what the hell?! I'm gonna join!” So I did, and I showed up in Rosedale for the first meeting. I paid my $10 or whatever it was. And the gentleman at the door looked at me very confused and he said “May I help you?” And I said “Is this the Toronto Wagner Society?” And he was like “Yes…” “Hi, I'm your newest member!”
And so I went to a few meetings with people who were about four times my age. But I learned a lot and it was sort of my entry point. And I kind of got over that, not to say one ever gets over it, but I moved on to other things. But yeah, when I discovered Wagner, it really was like a tidal wave, like the opening of Dutchman that just “Whoosh.”
Ashley Daniel Foot:
Well congratulations that is quite the Odyssey. I actually have one more question for Stanis. What was the moment that you knew when you were hooked on Wagner? Was there a specific time?
Stanis Smith:
Well, a little bit like Les, I actually avoided Wagner for a number of years. I've always been interested in and passionate about opera. But I avoided Wagner for the reasons that many people do, just preconceptions around the person and, you know, the operas being too long, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera...
And then a friend asked me if I would join him to go to the Seattle Ring. Which I somewhat reluctantly agreed to do. And then a few days later went into a serious case of sticker shock when I got the bill for the tickets. And he said to me, you know, you really should be a little bit of prep for this because it's not like going to just a normal opera.
So I bought a, a set of CDs and I sat for a few months listening to them with the score. And I thought this is the most astonishing stuff I've ever heard. And I couldn't, I actually couldn't believe what I'd been missing. And in some cases had tears running down my cheek. I mean it was just one of the sort of epiphanies that one has and I've never looked back. So that was my entry point in into Wagner.
Ashley Daniel Foot:
I have to ask Marjorie, what is the strangest or most unusual thing that's happened to you while you've been singing a Wagnerian role?
Marjorie Owens:
Maybe the strangest experience was when I sang my first Wagnerian role. It was with the Semperoper in Dresden. And I had never sung a German role really before, and I didn't speak the language yet. I was singing Tannhäuser; I was singing Elizabeth. And I feel like the audience knew the role better than I did at that point because it was a wieder… so it was a repeat… it was not a new production at all. So we had maybe a week of rehearsals and then we were up. And the audience in Dresden they do not play. They're hardcore Wagnerites. I mean, they premiered Tannhäuser in the Semperoper. So it was a terrifying experience. But the more I got into it… I mean, it was fabulous. Like, we had a wonderful time, but I've never felt that nervous possibly in my entire life than opening night of Tannhäuser.
Ashley Daniel Foot:
Well, I've asked everyone, so I've got to ask Patrick. What was your moment of terror or hilarity with Wagner or your moment that you knew you were hooked in?
J. Patrick Raftery:
Oh my gosh. Well I have a story, but I also kind of want to reiterate what Les said. The opening of Tristan und Isolde. And I had sung Il Trovatore and I had sung La Traviata [Alfredo’s] father, and I'd sung all this baritone rep, but I went to my teacher and I just said “I'm going to sing this opera. I know I will sing this opera.” And that was while I was still a baritone. And he said “Well that’s saying quite a bit.”
So I didn't know, but I would say my story was not dissimilar actually to Marjorie's, but my first Erik was in Leipzig with Simon Estes, and I had been singing a long time already at that point, 15 or 20 years or something, baritone things. And every person who walked by… the stage director was like “[in German] Are you all right?” I'm like “Yeah, I'm fine, I'm fine.” “Like, are you okay?” People and the conductor came up to me… “Are you all right?” And I'd say “Yes, I'm fine!” And then the last person was… I forget, the conductor or the stage manager, or the director of the theater. And then the soprano came up to me and said “Are you okay?” And I'm like “Well yes, if I wasn't okay, I wouldn't be here.” But apparently, they had had a difficult run with Erik's in the past that I didn't know. And I didn't know that the tenors weren't like a sort of levelheaded people always at that point. Because I never took a job that I didn't feel confident that I could do. So I was like “[in German] Yeah I feel good!” And then it went just fine. So that was my first Erik in Leipzig with the Gewandhausorchester, so that was also scary. But opera generally leads to those kind of things.
Ashley Daniel Foot:
Love it all! You've all been so generous with your time. I want to thank you all for being so forthright and open about your passion and your excitement. We're so excited to welcome all of you to the stage or to the audience of The Flying Dutchman, starting up on April 29th, at the Queen Elizabeth Theater. Get your tickets at VancouverOpera.ca. Patrick wrote a great essay that's in our program. He'll also be giving a pre-show chat. Watch out for the essay from Stanis Smith called Why Wagner? which was just published. Marjorie, of course, you will see on the stage, center stage in fact. And Les will, well, Les will be conducting the orchestra. So I want to thank you all very much for being with us for a fabulous Wagnerian discussion. I'll let you go back to getting ready for the big night. And we'll see you audience all at the opera. And thank you all.
What a wonderful conversation, loved it. Well that’s a wrap on our show. Hope you enjoyed it. I’d like to acknowledge our editor Mack McGillivray, who’s joining us for this month from BCIT. Thank you for doing a wonderful job on your first podcast. Over and out, and I’ll see you at the Opera.