Our penultimate opera from Beijing’s National Center for the Performing Arts for this season on the Sunday Opera (12/01 3:00 p.m.) is their new production of a very popular visiting presentation of Richard Wagner's "The Flying Dutchman" from last year.
Their production is a long one-act (well over two hours) that tells the story of Senta (Diana Lamar) the daughter of a Norwegian sailor named Daland (Dimitry Ulyanov). Daland wants Senta to marry, and the hunter Erik (Tuomas Katajala) is happy to oblige, but Senta is in love with the fabled stories of ‘The Dutchman” (Olafur Sigurdarson) who has been cursed to sail the seas of the world until he finds a faithful wife.
Senta decides that she will save The Dutchman, but he doesn’t believe her after overhearing a conversation between Senta and Erik. The Dutchman sullenly departs, not believing Senta, and to prove her faithfulness, she throws herself into the sea and to her death.
The cast is joined by NIU Shasha as Mary and WANG Chong as Daland’s steersman. Marcus Bosch leads the National Center for the Performing Arts Chorus and Orchestra.
Last year, we included music about the “sea” to complete our afternoon together, this time, through a serendipitous find, we’re including two pieces which, on the surface, don’t seem to correspond to the opera at all.
However, while looking for classical musica about “flying,” we found a playlist of “Music to listen to while on a flight,” and, although we’re still not sure why these are good choices, we decided to turn to two that fill our time.
We’ll begin with a performance of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in C major featuring pianist Hacchen Zhang with the Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Nathalie Stutzman.
Our final piece is much larger and grander and includes the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland conducted by Alexander Anissimov conducting Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 2 in E minor.
Are they in some way about flying? Does one feel like he or she is flying while listening to these two pieces or any of the others in their list that includes works by Borodin, Bach, Stravinsky, and more? You’ll just have to tune in after the opera to find out.
