As a Germany-Fan living in Singapore who is also interested in classical music, I was of course very excited to know that a Wagnerian opera was going to be staged in Singapore for the first time. On Thursday (27th October) in Victoria Concert Hall, I was lucky enough to be one who witnessed this part of Singaporean history of music.

The opera is called The Flying Dutchman and is said to be Richard Wagner’s first mature opera, and it is also his most accessible opera.

One thing that definitely catched my eyes from the first moment on was the local elements integrated seemlessly into the western story scene: puppetry made in the style of traditional Chinese and Indonesian paper cut and shadow-play. Shadows gave the entire setting a mysterious and surreal atmosphere, and indeed catched what this story is about: myth and fantasy intertwined with reality. They made the Wagnerian opera uniquely Singaporean, striking a chord among the local audience without loss of Wagner’s original idea when he designed the puppetry scenes.

This is from the program booklet. The paper cut and shadows are immensely original. 😀

The original myth of the Flying Dutchman originated in the 17th-Century nautical folklore, in which the Dutchman was cursed to sail the sea forever because of blasphemy. I as a person with continuous Wanderlust could not, at the beginning, understand why it was even a curse. But shortly after I realized that the 17th Century was an age where seafaring was as risky and lonely as space journeys now. Just imagine having to wander in the depth of the Solar System without a chance of coming back to earth! The movie The Martian expresses exactly this sort of desperation and loneliness. To people in the 17th and 18th Century, without GPS or Vitamin C tablets, the oceans could only be more unimaginably scary… In addition, the Dutchman was cursed to suffer from this misery for eternity without even the possiblity to die, and the entire crew of him were ghosts, so it was a hell on earth indeed.

The myth was retold by Heinrich Heine, creatively adding that the only possiblity of salvation for the Dutchman was to find a wife who was faithful to him until death. Heine wrote this part more or less as a sarcasm, for how it is even likely that the poor lonely man, forever drifting at sea, to even find a girlfriend?

But Richard Wagner took it very, very seriously.

In his opera, Wagner really created a heroin, Senta, a girl who was so moved by the folklore of the Flying Dutchman which she somehow found in a puppetry box, sympathized so much with the Dutchman to the point of obsession, and dreamed of saving him from his misery. When the Dutchman arrived at the port together with her father (who was also a sailor), Senta recognized him immediately even though they had never seen each other in person before.

So the Flying Dutchman was not just a story in the puppetry box, not just a ballad, a fantasy, but 100% real! And it was just too good to be true: her father wanted to arrange a marriage between them!

I would be really happy if this were the ending! They were a destined couple and thing went on just perfectly. Love wins. The curse defeated.  A pure, platonic relationship between the two and only the two finally exploded into eternal happiness. What can be better than this?

I think everyone has a hero of some kind. For me it’s a Victorian mathematician who I always want to know more of, whose every piece of writing inspires me all the time. Perhaps as expressed by Helene Fischer’s song Ein Kleines Glück:

Ich würd so gern die Welt durch deine Augen sehen,
deine Träume und Gedanken durchleben und verstehn.

(I am so willing to see the world through your eyes, to experience and understand your dreams and thoughts.)

I am probably not as crazy as Senta, but I think I could immediately relate to her. Platonic fantasy, though labelled as childish, is really just a part of human nature.

For that little piece of time when Senta and the Dutchman sang together in their engagement, I felt something that defined perfection like never before.

The story turned out to be tragic because Senta’s ex-boyfriend, by his passionate confessions, unintentionally made the Dutchman believe that Senta was unfaithful and his curse was coming back… Now I must stop spoiling, but the ending is not happy at all…

The good thing is that in our theater setting there seemed to be a chance for them to reunite alive and sail the sea together, if the Dutchman was determined enough to save Senta. Just that the opera ended so we didn’t know.

All these sensations would have been impossible without Wagner’s heart-capturing music. He is capable of writing the high-end and the grassroot, the warmth of humanity, the playfulness of young people, and the evilness of the demons/gods. The seamen on the ship longing for home and the girls working on the spins were so vividly and precisely represented, as well as the creepy singing from the Dutchman’s ghost crew. Everyone has a unique personality that is not in the least overshadowed by the main characters, and everything is expressed through music. Every time the theme is played, it is a different variation that brought familarity as well as a promise for something new.

The theme of the opera, as I believe, is the fight against heavenly dictations through humanity, sympathy and love. But there are many, many more interpretations. Is it about the faithfulness of couples, about the obedience to God, about rebellion against tradition, about the search of something larger than life, or even about colony, as the program booklet suggests? It’s almost a feature of great works that they always have multiple interpretations.

And last but not least: I would definitely want to see more Wagnerian operas staged in Singapore! 🙂