CD-876: Der Fliegende Holländer (The Flying Dutchman) - Wagner

Notes on this Remastered Issue

by Andrew Rose

In this remastered issue I have been able to tackle two problems which were beyond the 1980's technology of the original CD release. Although the sound quality was perfectly acceptable, there was a distinct thinness in the bass and lower mid-range, coupled with a tendency to harshness, especially in the strings. Here the XR remastering process brought both of these areas back into line.

More troubling was various instances of electrical interference - the recording suffered throughout from short electronic 'splats', and had also picked up distant hints of telephone ring tone and speech interference. At one point there was also the clear sound of an electronic flashgun being charged. All of this constitutes a real distraction to the listener, and I have managed to completely remove or reduce almost all of this noise without in any way marring the sound quality of the recording. My best guess as to its source is some kind of problem with the wiring to one of the microphones, as movements on the stage often triggered higher electrical interference. For the first time this superb recording can be enjoyed without this distraction.

The original 1987 CD issue was split partway through the second act and we have retained this split point. However, the gaps at the end of CD1 and the beginning of CD2 have been removed so that listeners to the two MP3s can enjoy a seamless transition between the two halves.

Critical Acclaim for this Recording

in it's original CD issue

"The mono sound is that of a good radio broadcast; the performance is by far the best available on discs. Astrid Varnay's Senta is a tower of womanly strength and Hans Knappertsbusch's conducting is a lesson in musical drama." - Octavio Roca in The Washington Times

"The cast... is excellent ...Weber [as Daland] sings with restraint, nobility, and good humor...Uhde is a magnificent Dutchman, full, varied, and superbly dramatic. Traxel sings clearly and sweetly as the Steersman. As Senta, Varnay is her usual powerful self..." -Wm. Youngren in Fanfare

"[Knappertsbusch's] interpretation is so powerful that one is absolutely convinced of its rightness." -H. Frank Thornton in The New Records

"Windgassen plays his role with customary intelligence and dignity. while Knappertsbusch, his tempos broad and hefty, works hand in glove with Ludwig Weber's shrewd Daland to give the opera a pleasant slant. Hermann Uhde remains one of the title role's most distinguished exponents." - John W. Freeman in Opera News

DER FLIEGENDE HOLLANDER AND THE "NEW BAYREUTH"

Wolfgang Wagner's 1955 production of Der Fliegende Holländer was an eagerly awaited occasion, not least for a symbolic reason. Although seven year intervals would have been apt enough, the Dutchman's landings at Bayreuth had been still less frequent. The very first Bayreuth production had not taken place until 1901; another followed in 1914 and a third in 1939, which was revived in the next three festivals. The Festspielhaus closed in 1944 and was not reopened for Wagner performances until 1951. During these years great Holländer performances took place elsewhere - under Clemens Krauss in Munich (1944) and under Reiner at the Met (1950). By 1955 Der Fliegende Holländer was the only mature Wagner opera which had not yet been seen in the "new Bayreuth." Wolfgang's production in that year completed the canon. It also fulfilled his grandfather's
wishes by presenting the opera in a continuous performance without intervals: this is essential if the opera's
extraordinarily compulsive momentum is to be sustained, and is all the more necessary in a recorded performance since the effect of picking up where a previous "act" was brought to an awkwardly cobbled conclusion is particularly distracting.

The new production was acclaimed for its dark, atmospheric lighting, for the imaginative use of a cyclorama to depict the sea behind the phantom vessel, and - above all - for its incisive concern with dramatic values and psychological nuances. Predictably, the naturalistic elements in Wagner's first mature opera were more difficult to assimilate to the psychological and symbolic approach that characterized the "new Bayreuth". In particular, Wolfgang's decision to arrange the spinning chorus in sternly formalized rows proved controversial, and some critics protested that such stylized regimentation diminished the dramatic contrast between the opera's two "worlds" - the obsessive, driven inner world of the Dutchman and Senta, and the jarringly "normal", earthly everyday world of the sailors and their womenfolk. Four years later, Wieland Wagner's production accentuated
this contrast (he was heard regretting that the lumpish women could not smell of cod-liver oil) but went to
another, arguably more worrying extreme by making Daland a drunken avaricious clown in a comical costume,
and disregarding Wagner's own plea that this "rough-hewn figure from the lite of everyday" should not be dragged "into the region of the positively comic."...

...The Present recording of the performance Knappertsbusch conducted on July 22 - and on that evening the role of Erik's Cavatina is exemplary not only in its musicality but in its manliness: unlike Lustig, Windgassen has evidently noted Wagner's warning that Erik must on no account be a "sentimental whiner", but is "stormy, impulsive and sombre, like every man who lives alone (particularly in the northern highlands)." Windgassen was one of the seven singers Wieland Wagner described in 1955 as "the seed from which the artistic and human community of the new Bayreuth has grown"...

...My own view - which, I had better add, had been expressed in an English magazine long before I was invited to write the present notes - is that this performance if not only an invaluable "historic" record of the revolutionary "new Bayreuth" approach to Wagner, but also the most satisfying of all complete recordings of Der Fliegende Holländer.

Excerpts from the sleevenotes, ©1982, Graham Bradshaw

Find out more:   Zweiter Aufzug: Ballade Strophe I CD covers to print:   CD-writing cuesheet: [What's that?] CD1:   CD2:

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