66 THENEWYORKER,MARCH23, 2020
Evgeny Nikitin, as the Dutchman, and Anja Kampe, as Senta.
MUSICAL EVENTS
PHANTOM VESSEL
“The Flying Dutchman” and “Agrippina,” at the Met.BYALEXROSS
ILLUSTRATION BY PIETER VAN EENOGE
W
hen, at the beginning of March,
the powerfully political Rus-
sian conductor Valery Gergiev led the
première of a new production of Wagner’s
“The Flying Dutchman” at the Metro-
politan Opera, a mild-mannered group
of protesters gathered outside to object
to his presence. “gergiev signed let-
ter backing the annexation of
crimea and war in ukraine” read
one sign. It was something of an under-
statement. Gergiev, the longtime chief
of the Mariinsky Theatre, in St. Peters-
burg, has close ties to Vladimir Putin,
and has repeatedly participated in high-
profile propaganda efforts on behalf of
the current Russian regime, including
making appearances in Crimea and in
Syria. In light of the regime’s well-doc-
umented involvement in domestic re-
pression, assassination plots, efforts to
sabotage Western democracies, and, not
least, interference in American elections,
Gergiev’s relationships with institutions
like the Met deserve scrutiny.
Inside the house, other objections
came to mind. When Gergiev first
emerged on the international scene, in
the nineties, he often elicited perfor-
mances of sensational force. In recent
years, his work has deteriorated, perhaps
because of an overfull schedule, and his
“Dutchman” reached a new low, at least
in my experience. It seldom rose above
the level of the acceptable, and at sev-
eral moments it fell below the standardof a top-rank opera house. Tempos were
sludgy, entries were ragged, the emo-
tional temperature was lukewarm, noth-
ing sparked. Dozens of conductors could
have achieved superior results. What is
gained by hiring Gergiev? Whatever the
rationale is, it can no longer be musical.
The production, which closed pre-
maturely because of the coronavirus shut-
down, arrived with problems of its own.
Expectations ran high because François
Girard, the director, had triumphed at
the Met with “Parsifal,” in 2013. That
staging’s stormy skies, wasted landscapes,
and lakes of blood showed visual inven-
tion of a high order, and the final tab-
leau of redemption for Kundry had an
air of authentic grace. Girard appeared
set to become the Met’s leading direc-
tor of Wagner—to be sure, a title of no
great weight, given the company’s near-
total absence from the annals of signifi-
cant Wagner interpretation.
The tale of the ghostly Dutchman,
cursed to wander the seas until a woman
saves him, is part of a long lineage that
includes everything from “The Rime of
the Ancient Mariner” to “Pirates of the
Caribbean.” Girard’s intention, accord-
ing to an interview he gave to the Times,
was to detach the old legend from its su-
pernatural trappings and transplant it to
a more abstract, mystical realm. In the
libretto, the Dutchman lands in Norway
after a storm; impresses a local captain,
Daland, with his wealth; and wins the
hand of Daland’s daughter, Senta. Gi-
rard, wishing to mute the apparent mi-
sogyny of the plot, made the Dutchman’s
gold an array of glowing crystals, appar-
ently of cosmic significance. The change
did little to redeem the transaction, and,
in any case, it undersold Wagner’s pow-
ers of critique: the mercenary trading of
women for gold is a recurring theme of
his work, and he uses it to depict socie-
tal corruption, notably in the “Ring” cycle.
There are, of course, many different
ways to stage “Dutchman”: classic pro-
ductions by Joachim Herz and by Harry
Kupfer framed the story as Senta’s dream.
Girard, though, jettisoned Romantic
conventions only to land in a minimal-
ist limbo. The set design, by John Mac-
farlane, was dominated by the menac-
ing prow of a ship—oddly, not the
Dutchman’s but Daland’s. The opera’s
one surefire dramatic coup, the entry of
the Dutchman’s vessel, passed by almost