13895 Wagner News 174 - Wagner Society of England

NEW ENO GUIDE TO DER FLIEGENDE HOLLÄNDER
Andrew Medlicott
In association with English National Opera, Overture Publishing is reworking and
updating the Opera Guides series originally published between 1980 and 1994. This guide
to Der fliegende Holländer has been published to mark the recent new production by
ENO. In a prefatory note series editor Gary Kahn writes “The aim of the present
relaunched series is to make available again the guides already published in a redesigned
format with new illustrations, some newly commissioned articles, updated reference
sections and a literal translation of the libretto...”
Jokes about Wagnerian length are of course wholly inapplicable to Holländer,
which is short not only by Wagner's standards, but everyone’s. Nevertheless, there is a
huge amount of ground to cover. This guide does so in less than 200 paperback pages.
They include: thirty one pictures; three articles from the original guide by John Warrack,
John Deathridge and William Vaughan; two new articles by Mike Ashman and Katherine
Syer; Wagner's own comments on the overture and performance of the opera, from the
original guide, translated by Melanie Karpinski; a thematic guide; the libretto and Lionel
Salter's translation of it; a discography; a guide to DVDs; a bibliography; and
identification of websites.
The five essays have much thought-provoking material. Perhaps the most startling
suggestion is still by John Warrack. The conventional view of the opera (as repeated in
the first sentence of the book’s blurb) is that ‘it is the first of Wagner’s operas considered
to be representative of his mature style’. But Warrack writes ‘The Dresdeners, delighted
with the grandiose Rienzi...were disconcerted by what they saw as a reversion to an older,
even a quainter, German Romanticism’. He does later write ‘A few in the city were to
sense the bold new ideas that dominated [the opera]...but in 1843 its day had not yet
come.’ Mike Ashman, on the same point in his article ‘How Wagner found the Flying
Dutchman’ writes ‘...the new work’s eventual acceptance was guaranteed by the fact that
Wagner had at last got his hands upon a genuinely popular subject.’ William Vaughan’s
and Mike Ashman's articles to some extent cover the same ground, the multitudinous
influences on Wagner, but Vaughan’s is more literary, Ashman’s more factual. Katherine
Syer’s article is a stage history.
‘The guide also contains the libretto and Lionel Salter's non-singing English
translation. I warmly welcome the decision to abandon ‘singing translations’ in these
guides. If a translation is to be sung, it must be a singing translation, with all the
alarmingly severe constraints and occasional reluctant compromises that involves. But
where the translation is simply to reveal what the original means, without having to fit the
music, the greater freedom for the translator is better for the listener/reader. The thematic
index identifies 40 musical themes, which are signalled by number throughout the libretto
and in John Deathridge’s ‘Introduction’. This is largely a musical account of the opera,
but also includes an interesting outline of the many occasions during the rest of his life,
on which Wagner returned to the opera and made changes. Deathridge’s argument is that
Wagner's motivation was to make the opera seem more like a worthy precursor of music
drama than it actually is – an aim in which, according to Deathridge, he failed.
This guide is an excellent piece of work. I can see it being extremely helpful to
newcomers, while also having much to interest old hands (pun intended).
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