You probably know more opera music than you think you do. If you like to watch TV or go to the movies, you’ve undoubtedly heard music from operas used in ways the original composers could never have even imagined. We’ve raided the Seattle Opera archives to put together a playlist featuring some of opera’s greatest hits—tunes you may already know because you’ve heard them in the cinema.
#1: From Apocalypse Now: Ride of the Valkyries (Die Walküre)
Francis Ford Coppola used the “Ride of the Valkyries,” famous music from the second opera of the Ring cycle, not for Wagner’s Norse goddesses of death but for American helicopters dealing out death from above in Vietnam in Apocalypse Now. It made for a brilliant, chilling moment—opera music used not just for emotional effect but as part of a film’s story.
Sung by Wendy Bryn Harmer, Jessica Klein, Suzanne Hendrix, Luretta Bybee, Tamara Mancini, Sarah Heltzel, Renée Tatum, and Cecelia Hall, with the Seattle Opera Orchestra conducted by Asher Fisch.
Opera transports the audience to worlds far away from the everyday, and costumes play a big role in creating that on-stage magic. Here are just a few of our favorite outfits from recent productions:
"(Stage Director) [Christopher] Alden returns to Seattle after a long hiatus. He was last invited here for a Don Giovanni in 1991 that reportedly generated a heated audience backlash. Kudos to general director Aidan Lang for inviting him back: Dutchman,
which closes Lang's second season at the helm, signals a serious
commitment to opera and is the finest production the company has staged
to date under his watch."- Bachtrack
"['The Flying Dutchman'] clocks in at under two and a half hours (without intermission)... the impassioned singers, the clever staging and the imaginative sets are so consistently engaging that Seattle Opera’s performance just speeds by." - The Seattle Times
Members of the Seattle Opera Chorus in The Flying Dutchman. Philip Newton photo
"On Saturday night in Seattle, in a revival of this Canadian Opera Company 1996 production, what happened on stage can only be described as stunning ... I was left gobsmacked unable to write-so moved I was by this show. It has taken me 24 hours to recover." - National Opera Journal
"Director Christopher Alden makes full use of the ingenious Allen Moyer
set, with elements that quickly switch locales from shipboard to shore
without any major breaks in the action. Anne Militello’s inventive
lighting designs underscore and clarify the story line with jaw-dropping
effects." - The Seattle Times
Seattle Opera presents The Flying Dutchman. Philip Newton photo
"Seattle Opera’s production of Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman opens with one of the most arresting curtain-raisings I’ve seen from the company: the cast filling Allen Moyer’s set, a cavernous box-within-a-box that is tilted 10 degrees or so off level. It’s an immediate cue that this isn’t going to be a traditionalist staging..." - Seattle Weekly
"The Seattle Opera Chorus sang with gripping vitality, even while executing some [vigorous choreography]." - The Queen Anne News
"Wagner intended the opera to be presented without breaks
between acts and the Seattle Opera in this production honors his 'through-composed' vision to great effect. (And for those who were a
little scared of being subjected to 2.5 hours of uninterrupted opera the
program likened it to the length of time we all have sat through a
movie)." - The Seattle Times
Nikolai Schukoff (Erik). Philip Newton photo
"This cast boasts two excellent tenors with fresh, flexible, lovely
voices: David Danholt as Erik, Senta’s betrothed, rightly peeved when
she decides to wed the Dutchman, and Colin Ainsworth as the ship’s
Steersman. Danholt was a winner of the Seattle Opera’s 2014 Wagner
Competition, Ainsworth is making his company debut; I hope they both
return soon and often." - Seattle Weekly
"In Saturday’s opening-night cast, the great strength and experience of
the principal singers brought an unmistakable authority to their
performances." - The Seattle Times
"The Dutchman was played on this night by Greer Grimsley. Grimsley has a swarthy dark voice that while powerful, is also versatile. It is easy for these Wagnerian singers to belt their way (at their peril) through these roles, but Grimsley always finds the color and the essence of the character." - National Opera Journal
Greer Grimsley as The Dutchman. Philip Newton photo
"In his Seattle Opera debut, Nikolai Schukoff as Erik, the huntsman in love with Senta, was as much the star of the evening as Grimsley and Nash. With his warmly expressive tenor, Schukoff was heart-rending in Act 3 reminding Senta in vain about her previous vow to him of love and fidelity." - The Queen Anne News
"In Saturday’s opening-night cast, the great strength and experience of the principal singers brought an unmistakable authority to their performances. The Dutchman, bass-baritone Greer Grimsley, is a familiar figure here (most impressively as Wotan in Seattle Opera’s “Ring”); he probes every nuance of the title role as a captain doomed to sail the seas in a ghost ship until he is redeemed by true love. With Grimsley’s commanding stage presence and resonant voice, this is a role that suits him admirably, and one he has frequently sung. The experience shows." - The Seattle Times
"Allen Moyer's unit set was an austere rectangular box dominated on one side by a massive steering wheel and a metal spiral staircase on which the Dutchman's 'ascension' played out in the denouement. The exaggerated tilt of the box recalled the Expressionist atmosphere of films like The Cabinet of Dr Caligari. In the opening scene this served handily as a 'realistic' representation of Daland's storm-tossed vessel." - Bachtrack
Members of the Seattle Opera Chorus in The Flying Dutchman. Philip Newton photo
"His Senta, Australian soprano Rebecca Nash, is making her Seattle debut — and what an interesting debut it is. Nash is a passionate singing actor with a voice of considerable heft and power." - The Seattle Times
"The Steersman, Colin Ainsworth, [was] the most lyric voice on the stage.
Vocal beauty is still important in Wagner, and Ainsworth brought loads
of it." - National Opera Journal
"Nikolai Schukoff, as her unsuccessful and hapless suitor Erik, is an
ardent singer who becomes a tragicomic figure in this staging, with
exaggerated attitudes of suffering that draw some audience laughter.
(Alden has him attempting suicide in several positions with a rifle
whose barrel is too long for the task.) You’d think that chuckles might
be inappropriate in this ultraserious opera, but they humanize the
characters and give more poignant depth to the denouement." - The Seattle Times
Wendy Bryn Harmer (Senta) and Alfred Walker (The Dutchman). Philip Newton photo
"... Wagner was well aware of the dangerous
potential art possesses when the goal is no longer escapist
entertainment. So is director Christopher Alden, whose production
(originally created for Canadian Opera Company two decades ago) mirrors
the young composer's sense of thrilling new horizons beyond routine and
convention. With a cast of powerhouse singers, this Dutchman sustains an arc of high-voltage tension, refusing to loosen its grip until the final blackout." - Bachtrack
"As Senta’s father, the sea captain Daland, Daniel Sumegi creates a memorable portrayal with his mighty voice and his deft acting. Colin Ainsworth is a lyrical Steersman and a highly effective actor; Luretta Bybee does fine work in the shorter role of Mary." - The Seattle Times
Colin Ainswroth (Steersman). Philip Newton photo
"Conductor Sebastian Lang-Lessing, who made his Seattle debut with the company’s 2014 International Wagner Competition, coaxed vivid and exciting performances from an orchestra that knows this composer inside and out." - The Seattle Times
"Sunday’s alternate cast created a remarkably different show. In the
title role, Alfred Walker was a strong actor with a warm tone that
didn’t quite have the heroic presence that Wagner requires. Wendy Bryn
Harmer was a standout Senta with a big, radiant voice; David Danholt
(one of the winners of Seattle Opera’s 2014 International Wagner
Competition) sang with artful clarity as the ill-fated Erik." - The Seattle Times
Rebecca Nash (Senta), Daniel Sumegi (Daland), Luretta Bybee (Mary). Philip Newton photo
Remaining performances of Seattle Opera's The Flying Dutchman: May 11, 14, 18, 20, & 21. Tickets & info: seattleopera.org/dutchman. #SODutchman
We’re excited to welcome Danish tenor David Danholt to Seattle Opera. Danholt officially makes his debut today, in the role of Erik, Senta’s jealous ex-boyfriend. But Seattle’s hardcore Wagnerites will remember Danholt from his prize-winning appearance at our 2014 International Wagner Competition, a great festival of song intended to identify and encourage the Wagner singers of the future. This affable young man discussed singing Mozart and Wagner with me, as well as his remarkable experiences starring in The Passenger, a Soviet-era opera dealing with the Holocaust which is impressing opera audiences all around the world.
David Danholt's prize-winning performance at Seattle Opera's 2014 International Wagner Competition, conducted by Sebastian Lang-Lessing
Welcome (officially!) to Seattle Opera! And best wishes for a debut as successful as your earlier Seattle Opera experience. Yes, the 2014 International Wagner Competition was really wild. I came here as the alternate; I was not supposed to be in the competition, the idea was they’d call me in if one of the others had to cancel. But a half hour after my rehearsal with Maestro Lang-Lessing and Speight, I got a phone call: they’d changed the plan, there wouldn’t be eight competitors, there would be nine.
Were you conscious of making a strong impression in that rehearsal? No! I remember Speight saying to Sebastian, “Maestro, I want to talk to you. Goodbye, David!” But I didn’t expect to compete, let alone win. There’s a photo and you can see, I look like someone who just fell down from the moon.
Helena Dix and David Danholt at Seattle Opera's 2014 International Wagner Competition Alan Alabastro, photo
To be frank, I’m not a competitive person at all. I don’t really like competing this way about music; the competition is always with ourselves—self-discipline, striving to do your best. But I’ve gotten so much good out of this experience. For me it was a confirmation that I’m going down the right path; that I’m a singing actor, a story-teller, instead of a bravura singer who’s great at throwing out high notes!
But young tenors are typically asked to do lighter, more lyric roles: Mozart and Rossini before Wagner. Yes, and I love singing Mozart, I’ve done Tamino, Don Ottavio, Idomeneo, and I want to keep doing them. But Rossini? I actually turned down a job offer to sing Count Almaviva, in The Barber of Seville. It didn’t really fit my temperment or technique. Honestly, I tend to get bored when I listen to Rossini. But not Wagner or Strauss or Mozart!
What about modern music? In the last two years you’ve been starring in this fascinating work, The Passenger, which has been given now in Poland, England, Germany, Austria, and at several theaters around the US. Yes, The Passenger was written in the Soviet Union in the mid ‘60s by Polish composer Mieczysław Weinberg. He was Jewish, he fled Poland during World War II; but he fled the other way, to Russia, where he became a protégé of Shostakovich. This opera is based on a play written by a Catholic Polish woman, Zofia Posmysz, who was in Auschwitz. Because as you know the Nazis put not only Jews in the concentration camps, but also Catholics, gay people, Communists, gypsies, all sorts of people whom der Führer didn’t like. It’s a very, very profound and important piece. I think it needs to be shown again and again.
I’ve been on this journey with The Passenger all the way, from its first staged performance, in 2010 in Bregenz, where I sang one of the minor roles, and covered Walter, one of the main roles. And then I sang Walter in Detroit and Miami.
Did European audiences respond differently than American audiences? One thing every performance had in common at the end: silence. Normally you get applause after an opera. This didn’t happen with The Passenger. The performances of course attracted big Jewish audiences; at every performance there were people who had been in concentration camps, or their children and grandchildren. And everything was very realistic. The costumes, for instance, were copies of what was actually worn. The uniforms of the SS officers, the clothing for the prisoners. We had talkbacks after the Miami performances, and I remember a fragile old lady taking the microphone and saying, “I was in Auschwitz from the age of 16 to 19. I came out of it. Everything you’ve seen tonight, it really happened. It was just like that.” Well.
Video from Lyric Opera of Chicago Promoting The Passenger
Is that opera difficult to sing? Weinberg is not typical 1960s; it’s very melodic, it’s quite easy to learn. The tessitura, the range, of my role, Walter, is close to the lyric roles of Wagner. The difficult part is what you have to say. My character is this West German diplomat with a shady past. The idea is, I was caught up in the madness of the Third Reich but got away; the opera happens many years later, as I’m going to Brazil. But I say these horrifying things: my character believes in the ‘master’ race, all that stuff.
David Danholt as Walter and Davida Karanas as Marta in The Passenger at Florida Grand Opera
Who is your favorite composer? At the moment I have a thing for Beethoven and Brahms. I’m about to sing Florestan in Fidelio, in the original version, where the tessitura is a bit lower, a bit more human. But I wouldn’t mind doing the final version. It’s one of my favorite operas. And Beethoven’s musical language really speaks to me. I love doing Missa Solemnis, the 9th symphony, his songs. Beethoven is not known to be merciful to his singers, but I like singing his music.
Do you find a connnection between the way Beethoven writes for the voice and early Wagner? Yes, very much. I’ve actually sung a lot of early Wagner. In Leipzig and Bayreuth I sang the tenor roles in Die Feen (Arindal) and Das Liebesverbot (Claudio), two operas Wagner wrote before The Flying Dutchman. There’s a reason Wagner later abandoned those early works. They’re not great. They go on forever, and you have to cut a lot. In Das Liebesverbot, he was attempting to write a pastiche of Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, but he was very young and didn’t quite know what he was doing.
Now, let’s talk about Erik. This is not the first time you’ve sung The Flying Dutchman. I did it in Milwaukee, at Florentine Opera. I really like singing Erik. He’s a beast. It sits a bit higher in the voice than a lot of other Wagner tenor roles. It’s not too long; it’s about the same size as Parsifal, who only sings for about a half hour.
It seems to me that Erik’s music has a connection to the lied, to Romantic German art song. Exactly. His cavatina could have been written by Bellini or Schubert; it resembles Beethoven, and early Schumann, and bel canto Italian opera. That’s good for a singer like me. My voice isn’t a great big shining-steel heldentenor sound. Erik has to sound youthful. He’s what the Germans call jugendlicher heldentenor—young hero-tenor, not a dramatic tenor, but rather a full lyric tenor.
Now, there’s some latitude in interpreting the character of Erik. The last time we did The Flying Dutchman in Seattle, we had a very literal by-the-book production, and he was just a regular guy, with his huntsman’s plaid flannel—looked like your typical Seattle ‘lumbersexual.’ But this production really pushes him to the extreme. It’s very clear in Wagner’s score: Erik has a strong personality. He’s this guy from the woods, a guy who could tear down the building if he wants to. He’s not a sweet little Don Ottavio. I’ve seen several productions where he’s that guy, and I don’t buy it.
You mean, an interpretation of The Flying Dutchman where Senta dumps Erik because the Dutchman is dark, brooding, and mysterious, whereas Erik is easy and boring. You’re right, that’s inconsistent with the libretto, where Erik is constantly threatening suicide or murder—“Senta, you’re killing me!” He’s outspoken, highly charged, all the time. In this production, [stage director] Chris [Alden] pushes Erik’s sanity, or insanity, to the extreme.
David Danholt as Erik at Seattle Opera Philip Newton, photo
I know one of the big influences on Chris Alden, with this Dutchman, has been early 20th century German expressionism. You must have studied The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Nosferatu and silent films like that, to get the acting style so spot-on. No, I can’t take credit for that. I hadn’t actually seen those films until last week! But I have been rehearsing with Chris Alden, and he really does take us down that path. It’s almost like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Erik really should be drugged, put in an asylum. And here he is, running around with a gun! I like such characters, people who are pushed to the limit.
Now here in Seattle we’ve recently done a lot of by-the-book Wagner; productions where, if it says, “A bunch of mermaids swim in,” then in our production the mermaids swim on in. But this production demands a bit more imagination. How would this Dutchman production go over in Europe? This wouldn’t shock the Germans at all; I think they’d find it quite ordinary. I don’t think this production is out of bounds. It’s very faithful to the story, and Chris is a wonderfully musical director. I have worked with stage directors who are extremely unmusical, and it ends up being a struggle, because they don’t understand where to go with the story. I don’t like it when stage directors put themselves above the composer or librettist.
I was struck by how Chris knows the music and text of this opera by heart. Every time I peeked into rehearsal, he was singing along. Yes, and his brother, David, is just the same. We did Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria in Copenhagen, and he knew the score better than the conductor. He even understood how to embellish, Monteverdi-style! This is not a conventional Flying Dutchman; but if you can look beyond that, you’ll like it. It’s dark, and a bit traumatizing.
On a different topic, many great Danish Wagnerians have sung here in Seattle. Your countryman Stephen Milling won our Artist of the Year award, some years ago, and has sung here many times. Is it easy to become an opera singer in Denmark these days? Scandinavia has always sourced great Wagnerians: Kirsten Flagstad, Ingrid Bjoner, Birgit Nilsson, Nina Stemme. Melchior, who’s an idol of mine, was Danish. But you don’t see a lot of Italianate singers coming from our region. And I fear that in the future, you won’t see the same level of quality Wagnerians coming from my part of the world. We don’t have the teachers. The skills needed for Wagner are very different from those for Italian music. You need stamina. You have to be able to sing, in the middle range, for a very long time. We have to recognize that Wagner is not only loud. His scores are very precise about dynamics. Yes, he has a big orchestra; but sometimes he makes them play very softly. All the great old Wagner singers sang it with nuance, sang the dynamics. We have to get back to that.
What new roles will you be learning in the next season? In the fall I’m going to Arizona for my first Prince in Dvořák’s Rusalka. Another youthful heldentenor role.
Yes, that’s a role Ben Heppner sang here in Seattle, early on in his career. But Czech is such a tricky language to sing! There’s a Czech woman who works at our opera theater in Copenhagen. She lives just two blocks away from me, and I have the sense that I’ll be moving in with her for language lessons. When I do operas I like to be as flawless as possible with my language. I don’t want anyone to tell me “it sounds like you’re a foreigner.” And sometimes it’s difficult not to sound like a foreigner!
I gave up trying to learn even how to pronounce your mother tongue, Danish. That language is hard! Yes, Danish is actually considered a throat condition, not a language!
Perhaps a title like Senta
wouldn’t have worked as well as The Flying Dutchman. Not nearly as much name—or myth—recognition, not nearly as
much intrigue. And Senta and the Flying
Dutchman sounds like a circus act. But the truth is that this opera is as
much about Senta as it is about the man she loves.
Both are outsiders—the Dutchman in the form of a refugee who
wants to find a way in; Senta in the form of a rebellious young woman who wants
out. But neither entrance nor exit is given lightly in this small community. Easier
to stick with the status quo; better to stand by, better to conform.
This idea—that the individual could be seen as a threat to a
closed, communal society—was the starting point for stage director Christopher Alden and set and costume designer Allen Moyer when they first conceived of this
production for Canadian Opera Company in 1996. And the production’s success and
long life may have everything to do with their interest in this timeless theme.
(In the past twenty years the production has been presented in Toronto three
times and at many other companies across the US and abroad.)
Once they had their central focus, Alden and Moyer looked for examples of closed societies and periods in history characterized by these tensions. What surfaced? The 1920s, that period after World War I, when German expressionism—in art and in early German cinema—emerged, just before Nazi
Germany would censor it as “degenerate.”
Seattle Opera's Sentas: Wendy Bryn Harmer (left) sings May 8, 14 & 20 and Rebecca Nash makes her company debut May 7, 11, 18 & 21.
You’ll see this artistic influence—which Alden admits was a
personal influence—everywhere in this production. Senta’s bob (notice she’s the
only one who’s got one) is the 1920s hairstyle of the emancipated woman. The
Dutchman’s portrait that so captivates Senta is an actual block print engraving,
“Man on a Plain” by Erich Heckel (influenced by Edvard Munch). And the
exaggerated makeup with charcoaled eyes is a nod to early German film (think The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari) pictured below.
The set works in an expressionistic way as well. You will see the space transform from a ship interior to a meeting hall, one that looks not unlike a closed box, imparting all the claustrophobia we might imagine of life in such a space. The floor tilts—suggesting a ship’s movement at sea and, when on land, Moyer says it was a way for him to say they lived in a world that had some cracks in its foundation; “it’s crushing a little under its own weight.”
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
And of course Wagner’s music informed the design and concept
as well. “Every idea comes from the music,” says Moyer. “It’s as if it’s the manifesto;
it’s your brief. You want the set to look like the music sounds."
With Wagner the scale of that sound is not small. So Moyer didn’t want to diminish that scale by putting a smaller-than-life boat onstage (a ship on a theater stage will always need to be smaller in dimension than the real thing). He wanted something suggestive—here we go again, something expressionistic—that would provoke the audience’s imagination to match the music’s larger-than-life scale.
“Wagner’s pieces reach into areas of the human experience that go to some dark, extraordinarily intense places,” says Alden. “That’s why people become so obsessed with Wagner operas. Very few [operas] go to such extreme places.”
The Canadian Opera Company's The Flying Dutchman. Gary Beechey photo
Alden is interested in taking audiences to that dark
territory, beneath the surface level narrative to a place that invokes the
subconscious.
“Senta is fixated on the way to escape this world,” Alden
says. “She lives in the real world but so much in the fantasy world; these two
worlds collide as she goes deeper and deeper into her fantasy.” And as these
two worlds—the real and the unreal—collide, Alden says there is a “crack”: “And
out of this crack come these demon forces that invade reality.” Take, for
example, the Dutchman’s entrance in scene two, as if he’s coming from another
world, or the moment when the Dutchman’s undead crew puts a serious damper on the
sailors’ party in scene three.
What are these otherworldy forces supposed to be? Well,
Alden and Moyer would rather leave the question open-ended. This piece is not
meant to direct you to easy tie-the-end-of-the-knot interpretations. Instead,
the idea is to provoke your inquiry. What happens—both to the individual and
the society—when the outsider comes ashore?
The question persists for Alden, who says he’d like to do a Dutchman that focuses on the plight of
modern refugees all over the world as they try to escape their impossible
circumstances. The analogy certainly fits. What happens when the outsider comes
to our shore? If it is a question
that makes us squirm, makes us wonder how exactly we are implicated, perhaps
the art is doing its job.
Dutchman director Christopher Alden in rehearsal. Jacob Lucas photo
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