October 7, 2022 – Tonight, I lucked into a pair of tickets for The Flying Dutchman by the Canadian Opera Company at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts in Toronto. I brought my daughter Max.

Parking wasn’t a problem – parked under Nathan Phillips Square and it’s about a four-minute walk over to the corner of Queen and University. Five if the lights are against you.

The experience started with the courteous doorpeople opening the door and greeting us as we walked up.

The lobby is lovely, done up in neutral shades with camel being predominant. The soaring height to the ceiling is interrupted by the glass staircase to the upper levels.

Max and I ordered from the snack bar. The price made her choke but I was okay with it, having already experienced similar when I took her and then my Dad to see Billy Elliot at the Stratford Festival: $12 each for my cheese tray and her charcuterie tray (in reality, a plastic box of approx 250ml capacity: mine had six pieces of cheese and two dried apricots, sliced, while hers had prosciutto, chorizo, and i think it was genoa salami or something with a half-dozen green olives with pits in); $6 for my bottle of bougie water and her glass of apple-cranberry juice, and $2 each for “souvenir glasses” – flimsy plastic things that would resell at the thrift shop for 10c each. The water was “oxygen infused”, which brought to mind someone sticking in a drinking straw and blowing bubbles.

My problem is that for $12, I don’t expect to see mold on one of my pieces of cheese or that another has the end all dried up and hard.

But it’s opening night after years of no opening at all, so I can overlook it.

This time.

Inside the theatre, the space is really lovely – more of the camel tone with balconies going up and up and up to a very complicated looking ceiling complete with red Exit signs.

The seats could use more padding and ergonomics because by the time the opera ended, my butt was completely numb.

The other major issue was that neither Max nor I have ever encountered so much body product! The smell was so thick I could taste it. It choked up my throat and was giving me a headache.

Okay, on to The Flying Dutchman:

Technical notes:

• I won’t get into the cast and crew – you can find that here: https://www.coc.ca/productions/23486 – other than to say that my daughter found it an adjustment, living as she does on a steady diet of TikTok videos and online airbrushed media perfection.

• She also noted that when one watches opera singers online or on TV, their voices seem far more powerful. There were times the music completely drowned out the singing but, for the most part, it was easy enough to hear from the 11th row centre.

• The opera is in German from the mid-19th century but they run subtitles across the top of the stage (I guess they’d be supertitles, then). Thing is, there’s a lot more singing than there is subtitling so a lot of it has to be inferred from context and the music.

As the lights go down and the music rises, there is what looks like a representation of a framed woodcut-style portrait on the outside of the curtain to the right. A woman walks in slowly (SO slowly… so very, very slowly) from the left to stand in front of it with her back to the audience. After such a very long time (this is actually the pace throughout the first act – it gets real old – she slooooowly raises her arms and the curtain rises, taking the portrait with it as the lights go down.

We are left looking at what is clearly a ship’s hold: the stage is canted down from left to right. Underneath the tilted floor, we can see a forest of two-by-fours at all angles. In amongst them, we can see people but it’s not sure if they’re actual people or mannequins. The entire interior (walls and ceiling) are covered in short, grey-weathered planks. Very large high window openings covered with folding shutters that, when closed, are indistinguishable from the walls) are on the top half of the right and left walls. On the right side are very high door openings. A giant rusted wheel rises from the floor in front of a narrow, precarious-looking metal spiral staircase.

The stage is a tableau populated by a bunch of people wearing black knee-length raincoats, boots, and Newfoundland Sou’wester hats. In front is a man wearing a short black jacket made of the same black rubberized fabric, fitted black boots, and a black fisherman’s cap with a bill. He is looking at the woman and holding out his arms as if he’s begging her. In his arms is a bridal veil.

The woman stares at him and he stares at her and the people stare ahead blankly and the music plays.

And plays. Then plays some more.

The woman holds up her arms as if she’s going to accept the veil, then turns her face to the side, shakes her head in rejection, and then slowly, slowly, slowly walks off the stage while the people and the man continue to not do anything at all.

This is pretty much the pace of the entire first act and a good bit of the second, although the music picks up the pace in the second half so it’s not so bad.

Once she’s off, the people animate. They start lunging and lurching from side to side confirming the music’s statement that this is a ship caught in a storm. The man in the cap, who turns out to be the captain, holds the wheel and there’s some singing about what a dreadful storm this is. Half the people roll and toss and lurch out the side doors while the rest don’t.

The captain then calls over the Steersman, who is wearing the long black coat of the others but instead of a sou’wester, he’s wearing a black toque. He tells the Steersman to take the wheel and keep watch while everybody else heads out for some R & R. As soon as he’s offstage, the Steersman grabs a bottle and knocks back a quick one. He starts singing on and on about his girlfriend and how he’s going to bring her gold and she’s just lovely and perfect. He continues with the bottle until he ties the wheel and then lies down on the floor to the right and goes to sleep.

So the music plays some more and it goes on while we watch this guy sleeping on the floor and nothing happens until the two blonde twits in front of me decide they want to play online poker. They have their cell phone on full brightness basically blinding me and making my daughter flinch away from the scalding LED glare. I leaned forward until my face was right between them (which told me from where the choking cloud of body product originated) and said very calmly and distinctly “Excuse me, could you not? Thank you.”. They stared at each other, no doubt rolling their eyes, and shut the phone off. For what these seats cost and all the effort put in by the cast and the orchestra, I should’ve knocked their stinky heads together.

Just as I did not knock their heads together, red light floods the stage above and below. We can see the people below stage are dressed in old-timey prisoner-type striped pajamas. They turn their heads to look at us and start moving and shifting and reaching out between the 2x4s toward us. Their eyes have blackened sockets. I’m reasonably sure this is meant to represent Hell. A man starts singing and slowly ascends the spiral staircase. He’s wearing a fisherman jacket so long it drags on the ground behind him like a bridal train. He’s wearing a cap and aviator goggles.

Turns out he’s the Flying Dutchman. He sings a song about how he’s damned and his ship is damned and the crew is damned and there was an angel that told him how to get un-damned. Turns out that he must sail the ship forever except once every seven years he can come ashore for one day and try to win true love. Only then will he, his crew, and his ship be freed.

He moves to the back of the stage and the Captain comes back, finds the Steersman sacked out on the floor, and boots him awake yelling the opera translation of “You had one job!”, which involves a lot more words and takes about two minutes. The Steersman stumbles and bumbles around apologetically. Then the Captain asks him about that ship over there that wasn’t there last night. The Steersman again is dramatically horrified and apologetic. They hail the ship and get the reply that it was there because of the storm and needed safe harbour. The Steersman tells the Captain “Don’t do it, boss!” but the Captain agrees to let the other come aboard and says they will guide the ship to a safe harbour.

A pendant light descends from the ceiling while the crew reappears carrying a big round table and two wooden Captain’s chairs. They leave and the two captains sit at the table. The Flying Dutchman presents himself as the captain of the mystery ship, which turns out to be storm-damaged and, by the way, laden with gold, jewels, and other treasure. He offers some to the Captain in exchange for safe harbour. The Captain sees the treasure and starts drooling over it, snatching it up from the table, fondling it, and rubbing it over his face. Discussion ensues and turns out the Captain has a loving and beautiful daughter, Senta, who he will agree to marry off to the other captain in exchange for all the treasure on the ship.

While this is going on, we see the Steersman staring suspiciously at the other captain and out at the ship and realization dawning on his face. He argues with the captain telling him to cut the other guy loose and get away. The Captain refuses to listen and pushes him off, sending him falling to the floor. Apparently this is mid-19th century comic relief. Neither Max nor I found it amusing.

So the crew comes back and there’s more singing and sailing and hauling away on long ropes on pulleys and a big sail goes up and billows around and comes down before they all leave the stage.

They are replaced by a bunch of women dressed in a way that reminds me of Vermeer’s “Girl with a Pearl Earring” or WWI Communist Russian washerwomen. They are carrying tall, narrow ladderback chairs. A second wheel, smaller than the first, descends from the ceiling and, with the aid of a strap around the two wheels, they start turning. It is now representative of an industrial-sized spinning wheel. The women begin singing about spinning and doing their duties and how wonderful it is to be a dutiful woman waiting for their men to come home and bring them gold and jewels in exchange for their feminine dutifulness in spending all their time spinning and not cheating on their men. (*gags slightly* – apologies for Wagner’s mid-19th century socially acceptable misogyny).

The woman from the beginning meanders in with the now-familiar funereal pace carrying the portrait that was on the curtain. She doesn’t take her eyes from it. They’re singing away and doing hand and arm movements supposed to be spinning or weaving or something suitably feminine and she dozes over to the left of the stage, hangs the portrait, and then just stares at it. The women start singing about how nice it must be to be young and beautiful and not have any responsibilities. The team lead, Mary, tells them off, then pleads operatically with Senta (cause that’s who she is – the Captain’s daughter) to stop obsessing over the portrait and get a life. Senta sings back about how much she pities the poor guy in the photo who’s suffered so much and she wants to help him because she’s a good, virtuous girl who was raised right.

Senta is sung by soprano Marjorie Owens , whose voice is as high and clear as crystal. Her voice is so powerful that Max had to put on her auditory damping headphones (it’s an autism thing). I was fascinated by the way her voice lilted and trilled, sounding literally like birds at times. Most of the other cast tended to be overwhelmed by the orchestra, with the exception of the Steersman, sung by Finnish-American Tenor Myles Mykkanen .

Erik, Senta’s former love, shows up by walking across the front of the stage slowly, slowly, slowly. He’s carrying a gun and peering around so at least this time the slow pace makes sense, him being a hunter and all. He heads up on the stage and argues with Senta about the portrait, how she’s unfaithful to him, and she shouldn’t be obsessing over some guy she doesn’t even know. She reminds him she never pledged herself to him and she never asked him to go climbing mountains to pick some dumb flower or other. It’s a brief, shining moment of female empowerment – too bad it’s because she’s wrapped up in her Mystery Man. It was right around this time that I realized Max had fallen asleep and was drooling down my right arm.

So everybody sings about how she’s being fickle and picky and how nice it would be to have a catch as fine as Erik and how nobody made anybody any promises before the women hang the chairs up on the walls and leave, Erik sulking along behind them. The Captain comes in stage right while Senta apparently hears a knock at the door and opens it to reveal the Flying Dutchman in silhouetted profile staring at a photo in his hand (it’s her, natch). She’s staring at him, he’s staring at the photo, her father is staring at the pair of them, and the music plays until the curtain comes down and the lights go up, waking Max up, who stared around in bewilderment.

Then there’s an intermission of about twenty minutes.

The second act started off great, because the two seats in front were now bimbo- and stink-free. Thankfully, the second bit picks up the pace, although not initially but soon enough that Max stayed awake and thoroughly enjoyed the second act. The two lovebirds in potentia meet, and spend about five or six more minutes standing there staring at each other while the Captain sings merrily about how wonderful it is she’s going to marry a rich fellow and how happy he’s going to be with his daughter married to a rich fellow and how happy the rich fellow will be married to such a young and virtuous girl before he confirms that she will, actually, marry the guy.

The crew comes in wearing suits, ties, and green armbands, which are never explained. They’re bringing in long tables and taking down the ladderback chairs so they can sit around on the chairs, bang the tables/floor/walls with big beer steins, and jump up and stomp on the tables while singing about what a great party it is and how hard it is to be a sailor and gee, wouldn’t it be great if there were some women around right about now?

The women come in wearing 1920s-style dresses and hats complete with stoles and tippets in neon green. More singing and jumping on the table and clashing of beer steins. Someone sees the mystery ship and there’s a lot of yelling and hullooing trying to get the attention of the other crew so they can come over and party but there’s no response. The Steersman, meanwhile, is running around frantically trying to get them to stop and leave the other ship alone. He gets shoved and bounced to the back of the room where he spends some time cringeing against the back wall. They give up and party on their own. The party ends, leaving overturned furniture and whatnot all over the place.

Senta is getting prepared for her wedding when Erik comes in accusing her of being unfaithful. She denies it, saying there were never had any promises between them. He lists all the things he did that should have told her he loved her and should obligate her to love him. She kicks back saying she never asked him to do any of that and she never said or did anything to establish a claim.

The Flying Dutchman overhears the argument and, because this is opera, decides that that proves she is actually a faithless whatever and he can’t marry her after all. He decides to save her from herself by taking her bridal veil, which means he’s cancelling the wedding. Senta insists, he stands adamant, saying that it’s only because she didn’t make a promise before God that she won’t spend eternity in damnation (maybe the people under the stairs are all his former wives?). She insists she loves only him and will be faithful to him until death and then, holding his portait in front of her, somehow compels Erik to shoot her and she dies.

So the end result is:

Senta died, which is a Good Thing because she proved her fidelity and virtue

Erik, who loved her but has serious communication issues, is now a murderer

The Flying Dutchman is now freed of his curse (we can tell because he goes up the spiral staircase carrying the veil and he’s batched in blue light) which is fair because …. he…. needed a good woman to die for this to happen and this is good because she fulfilled her Womanly Duty to Stand By Her Man.

The Captain now has neither his treasure nor his daughter.

and we never did figure out the reason for the Steersman. Maybe he’s that little voice in the back of the head that nobody ever listens to.

7.5/10, worth another watch.

Afterthoughts:

• More padding on the chairs!
• A little tray or holder so we don’t have to keep cups, wallets, phones, etc, in our laps or our purses on the floor.
• Better quality control for the snack items.
• More action on the stage – there’s honestly no reason to take 3 or 4 minutes to cross a stage that’s about 30 feet wide.
• Clarity on obscure parts like the Steersman, the people under the stage, and so on.
• I would like to see a modernized version of this story, maybe one where Senta frees him because she’s a badass, not because she’s Sappy Sally.
• I wouldn’t mind having that set for my livingroom – minus the sloped floor, tho.