Magnificently terrifying tale of ‘The Flying Dutchman’ soars in grand staging at Lyric Opera

No, it isn’t Halloween quite yet, but Lyric Opera of Chicago has summoned a compelling nightmare in its first show of the 2023-24 season.

Attend the tale of Richard Wagner’s “The Flying Dutchman” (“Der fliegende Holländer”) and plan to stay up a couple of hours afterwards, to chew on what just went down.

Wagner composed his gory “Dutchman” at barely age 30, when he was yet unknown and desperate for his first big break, haunted by debt collectors and by the disastrous memory of a recent sea voyage with his young wife who suffered a miscarriage while the tempest-tossed ship drifted off-course for weeks in the northern seas.

The lyric melodrama this scary experience inspired is elusive, alarming, almost deliberately unclear, but quite good for chewing on. And if, for audiences, Wagner’s opera can seem a mysterious conundrum, for directors it’s an irresistible challenge.

Lyric Opera has assembled one of the finest casts in recent history to perform this saga of a doomed sea captain, known only as the mysterious “Dutchman,” who must sail the seas for seven years until he is given just 24 hours to land and win a woman’s love, or be tempest-tossed for another seven years (until he can try again).

But it’s director Christopher Alden’s production design that makes the first impression. Its vertigo-inspiring sets and creepy costumes by Allen Moyer, coupled with lighting by Anne Militello, literally rock the senses as if in a haunting dream. I sympathized with the audience member who grabbed the armrest near me as the show began.

© Todd Rosenberg Photography

The playing area is off-axis, a narrow shoebox shape that seems to float above the stage, tilted top left to lower right, like a bottle in a bad sea. It gives the alarming sense of the ship itself, the Flying Dutchman, being buffeted by a storm as the story begins. Although the floor doesn’t really rock, it certainly seems to, as the remarkable cast of sailors and citizens mimics the action of being rocked back and forth, up and down, by traumatic events of meteorological, and increasingly hallucinogenic, nature.

The role of the Dutchman seems custom-made for Polish bass-baritone Tomasz Konieczny, a brilliant veteran with a dark voice and gleaming, almost trumpet-like top, renowned for such complex characters as Wagner’s Wotan, Verdi’s Scarpia, and Berg’s Wozzeck. (He is well-remembered for his Wozzeck at the Lyric a few years back.)

Konieczny is joined by the thrilling American dramatic soprano Tamara Wilson as Senta, the woman on whom the hurried and desperate Dutchman sets his sights this time ashore. Wilson grew up in Chicago and has sung at the Lyric twice before; she is in her prime, with a huge voice capable of profound intensity and torment.

It’s Senta’s father, Daland, captain of a ship at harbor, whom the Dutchman first approaches about the marriage he urgently seeks. Deep-toned Finnish bass Mika Karas plays the immediately intrigued parent. The Dutchman’s rival for love is Erik, sung by Robert Watson, an exciting tenor of remarkable heft, who shows us a hapless and vengeful odd man out when it comes to his dream for a life with Senta.

The production is new to the Lyric, co-produced with Canadian Opera Company, which staged the show for the first time a few years back. To say that director Christopher Alden is obsessed with this opera may be understatement; it is actually his fourth take on the same tale since 1996. Although one can be certain that Alden is hardly cursed, one might say he has more or less adopted the rhythm of the bedeviled Dutchman.

© Todd Rosenberg Photography

In contrast to Alden’s fixation, this “Dutchman” constitutes Lyric music director Enrique Mazzola’s first pass at Wagner in Chicago. The orchestra was beefed up with additional musicians for the occasion and he encouraged a disciplined, expressive chorus. Nevertheless, the musical impact was more elegant and lyrical than shocking and unexpected overall.

The moments that resonated were powerfully visual and often nightmarish such as an early depiction of the Dutchman’s powerless and doomed sailing crew, staring from below deck in narrow spaces that glowed red.

Is there a heavy directorial hand at work here? Well, yes. But Alden is consistent to the end in underscoring the helplessness of the humans trapped in this story. Women go at their weaving and spinning as if they are automatons. The heroine Senta, though sung with splendor by Wilson, will have almost no card to play. But that is the plotline. On the day after, it’s the music that lingers.