Founded in 2018, the Irish National Opera bills itself as Ireland’s newest and most enterprising opera company. Who’s to say otherwise? Repertory from Baroque to contemporary, from canonical to beyond the fringe, bespeaks the leadership’s catholic tastes (or should we make that “ecumenical”?). What’s more, the company performs all over the Irish map, so far in some 30 spaces of all sizes.
A flagship presentation of Richard Wagner’s Der Fliegende Holländer, captured live on March 27 at the Bord Gaís Energy Theatre in the Dublin Docklands, shows off the institution at the peak of its ambitions. The 2,100-seat house, designed by the starchitect Daniel Libeskind and inaugurated in 2010, is the Emerald Isle’s largest fixed-seat facility.
A Wagner aficionado will collect Dutchmen by the dozen over the decades, but one as gung-ho as this one? Probably never. Fergus Shiel, the artistic director of Irish National Opera, drives the score for maximum volume and breathless speed. Subtle his approach is not, but it’s thrilling. The chorus, which pulls off dopey summer-camp dance routines and has tons to sing, totally loves it.
As do the soloists. In the lyrical part of the Steersman, who falls asleep singing a wistful love song, the tenor Gavan Ring pumps out big-boy sound, all the time, even while clambering up and down a rickety mast. As Daland, his captain, the bass James Creswell hollers up a terrific storm. The steely soprano Giselle Allen revels in Daland’s daughter Senta’s fantasies of the undead Dutchman she is determined to deliver from God’s curse. The plangent tenor Toby Spence takes on Erik, the reproachful beau she blows off the moment her dream comes true.
As far as decibels go, Jordan Shanahan holds his own in the title role, but imaginatively, he’s on a different planet. His dark, rich bass-baritone has a smoldering intensity, and he articulates text so as to make it expressive, whether one understands the words or not. Of medium stature, solidly built, with kingly posture and a wide-open moon face framed by a pirate’s mane and beard, Shanahan sets little store by business; he holds the stage most of all by listening.
His reserve serves him well in an awkward getting-to-know-you moment at the kitchen table when he stops Senta from building him a sandwich to show he can make one for her. Rachael Hewer’s production is long on such bright ideas. Viewers who can’t take music straight will appreciate the extended mime during the overture in which a little Senta (Caroline Wheeler) falls under the spell of storybooks.
As these things go, the sequence is OK. But it won’t do to turn the social hub of Daland’s great room, where seafarers’ stay-at-home womenfolk work their spinning wheels, into a fish cannery. Equally off the mark: turning Senta’s huntsman suitor Erik into a grocer in a butcher’s apron, bearing goodies for the larder wrapped in brown paper. Check it out! He brought bread, butter, ham, a chunk of cheese, and, oh!, doesn’t the tomato smell yummy? Handy fixings when somebody needs a sandwich!
Der Fliegende Holländer is available for streaming on OperaVision
Matthew Gurewitsch writes about opera and classical music for AIR MAIL. He lives in Hawaii
