Richard Wagner - Der fliegende Holländer - Sawallisch, 1974 - Opera-MovieDVD9 - NTSC - 4:3 - All Regions - German - LPCM, DTS - 117min.
Subtitles: Chinese, English, French, German, Spanish
Deutsche Grammophon / Unitel, Released 2008
Donald McIntyre · Catarina Ligendza · Bengt Rundgren · Hermann Winkler · Ruth Hesse · Bayerisches Staatsorchester · Wolfgang Sawallisch · Directed by Václav Kašlík
Here’s a filmed Dutchman soaked in the sea from which the doomed figure of legend emerges into an atmospheric production enhanced by a powerful rendition of the title role and effective conducting by Wolfgang Sawallisch, an experienced Wagnerian. The story of a sinner condemned to sail the seas until Judgment Day, thirsting for a death that can only come through the redemption of a woman’s selfless love, is, in Wagner’s hands, a searing drama. The Overture is here illustrated with painted scenes that encapsulate the narrative. The opera itself offers traditional costuming and sets with a realism a stage production can’t capture. When the Dutchman emerges from his gnarled, threatening ship he tramples through the shallow water of the harbor and we hear the splashes made by his boots. His ship of doom has blood-red sails, but, less happily, his ghostly crew seems left over from a B horror flick. Václav Kaslík’s film direction captures the opera’s atmosphere well, with expressionist touches like the mists that shroud the vessel of doom, and the spider’s web of fishing nets that symbolize the way the characters are trapped in their situations. --Amazon
This is also much the finer version musically, Sawallisch's keen, airy performance, in basically the 1843 version, ranks with the very best in any medium, with his excellent Bavarian forces, and a truly first-rate east. Donald McIntyre . . . conveys the Dutchman's desperate vulnerability very movingly . . . [Catarina Ligendza] with her gift for depicting wide-eyed emotional instability this becomes one of her finest performances, clear-voiced and intense . . . [This] remains the finest 'traditional' version available. --Record Review
Catarina Ligendza's soprano is appealingly colored and full, yet possesses a reasonably youthful lightness. Hermann Winkler . . . manages to introduce a heroic element to his vocal portrayal of Erik, a role that can devolve into whining . . . Wolfgang Sawallisch is "an acknowledged Holländer specialist" and he leads the performance with terrific dramatic thrust and incisiveness. Sawallisch opts to eschew Wagner's Tristanesque revisions to the end of the Overture and the close of the entire work and, especially in the latter instance, this contributes to the film's powerful theatricality . . . The sound . . . is very good . . . video-inclined Wagnerians will find the Kaslik/Sawallisch effort a lot of fun.-- Record Review
