He also added comic relief when he introduced Senta and the Dutchman and was baffled by the depth of their emotion as they stood transfixed with one another. His posture and facial expressions were clear and comical as he bartered Senta to the Dutchman in exchange for treasure, having no idea he was dealing with the tormented ghost of legend. Although he is a bass, Sigmundsson’s voice had a light, buoyant quality, which matched his character’s simplicity. Kristin Sigmundsson, making his Utah Opera Debut as Senta’s father Daland, also provided an earthy foil to the Dutchman.
Stahley’s clear, sharp tenor contrasted with the Chioldi’s bass-baritone, accentuating the differences between their characters. In their first duet, where they fought over the book containing the legend of the Dutchman, Senta appeared to be saying what she needed to say to soothe his potentially violent temper. Making his Utah Opera debut, Stahley played Senta’s suitor, Erik, with the petulance and menace of a toxic boyfriend, and Harmer reacted with fear. In contrast to Harmer’s otherworldly duets with Chioldi, her duets with Robert Stahley were fractious and earthbound. While Chioldi appeared cold and somewhat stiff in the first act, he gave his character a weight and gravitas that made his suffering real and believable as the production progressed. Chioldi, who last worked with Utah Opera in its 2019 production of La Traviata, has a deep, rich voice that matched Harmer in power and intensity, and he displayed striking musicality, especially when singing directly to Senta. The production’s high points were Harmer’s duets with Michael Chioldi as the Dutchman, and the pair’s chemistry was palpable from the moment their characters met. Every breath reached the back wall of the theatre, and the depth of Senta’s feeling was reflected in Harmer’s tone and phrasing.
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Her powerful voice maintained a mellow, rounded tone then unleashed its full strength during her solo passages, when she sang about the Dutchman. Her performance surpassed the already high expectations raised by her solo tour de force in Poulenc’s La Voix Humaine(which replaced the cancelled Dutchman two years ago).įrom the moment Senta first appears, she is fixated on the ghostly legend, and Harmer found the emotional truth in her character’s obsession.
In the company’s current Dutchman, Wendy Bryn Harmer finally got to play Senta. The production had been rescheduled from October 2020 due to the pandemic. Utah Opera is opening its season with a revival of The Flying Dutchman, which opened Saturday night at the Lawson Capitol Theatre. Although Wagner wrote it before he had fully developed his distinctive style, Dutchman foreshadows many of the elements of his more mature works the title character’s rousing leitmotiv feels a bit like the “Ride of the Valkyres,” and the titanic, ultimately fatal longing between him and his love interest calls to mind Tristan and Isolde. The opera also gives audiences a taste of Wagner without taxing attention spans.
Dutchman clocks in at under three hours, which means it can be produced without paying overtime rates-a genuine issue with Wagner’s other works, most of which are over four hours long and require larger orchestras. The Flying Dutchman is the one Wagner opera that can serve gracefully as a staple of regional opera companies. Michael Chioldi and Wendy Bryn Harmer star in The Flying Dutchman at Utah Opera.
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