Success!

The reviews are in: opening night of "Der fliegende Holländer" at Mobile Opera was a great success. It was also a historic event: the first Wagner opera and the first opera in German to be done in Mobile. Of course, I lack objectivity as I was intimately involved in the process, but I will say that I was very impressed with the entire production. Amanda Mace shone in her portrayal of Senta with gorgeous, consistent singing. Her voice just soars and fills the hall; Doug Nagel's Holländer was imposing, sung with riveting emotional commitment; John Pickle played the hapless Erik with a performance worthy of any opera house. Kay Walker Castaldo's direction made the story come to life in a sensible and touching manner. (We can be grateful that we are not subjected to the moronic eurotrash that one sees in many European houses these days.) But the most striking aspects of this production were Barry Steele's lighting and visual effects. It is not enough to call them projections; the images we saw were three-dimensional and they moved. At times it was like watching a movie. During the overture a life-size ship glides across the stage; in the opening storm we see rain, so realistic that you could see individual raindrops splat upon the ground. I expected a flood of water to cascade off the stage into the pit. During the transitional music to the second scene we fly across a rocky sea landscape and enter the window of a wooden building to find ourselves suddenly in a room of Daland's house. I don't know how many lighting designers are experimenting with this type of technology, but this might be the wave of the future. Who needs expensive, cumbersome scenery when you can project images that move? (There was one set piece, however, a moveable, multi-tiered platform that suggested different levels of the ship.)
In honor of the event I have composed two haiku. Here they are:

Dutchman comes to call;
Senta gaga over him.
Loud singing ensues.

Two acts follow first;
On and on and on it goes...
will it ever end?

All joking aside, I have come to love FH. It is Wagner's first true masterpiece. Despite being a transitional work, employing many operatic conventions of the time, it gives us a glimpse into the revolutionary style that was to evolve. FH is the first of the composer's operas that uses the Leitmotif.