Think Pirates of the Caribbean, mix in a few zombies and borrow a set from your children’s Playmobil collection. Herbert Fritsch’s new Fliegende Holländer for Berlin’s Komische Oper is shrill, crass slapstick — a laugh a minute, if you find such things funny.
The opera is a dramatic tragedy, but that does not bother Fritsch in the least. He winds up his figures like so many clockwork dolls and has them lurch, grimace and gape their way through the score. The title figure is Jack Sparrow, right down to his floppy sleeve ruffles, and his motley crew, some of them dressed as women (ha ha ha), owe more than a little to Walt Disney. The stage, a concave Rubik’s Cube with shiny sides, just fits a pirate ship, rocked and dragged in circles by its crew. The ship is entertaining for the first few minutes, then sits redundantly for the rest of the opera, having revealed all its secrets at the start.
Captain Daland, Senta, the local sailors and the spinning girls are all costumed as parodies of their parts, as if escaped from a musical theatre production down the road; they gasp and moan, blow kisses and roll their eyes, each gesture earning a snigger from the audience. It is slick but vapid.
Had the evening been musically strong, it might have offered some frisson between the tawdry visuals and the opulent score. But Dirk Kaftan conducts as if whipping a team of horses, hair-raisingly fast and ear-splittingly loud. It is harsh and exhausting, and leaves the singers little choice but to scream to be heard. Only Günter Papendell as the Holländer (Johnny Depp in another life) achieves subtlety, with some genuinely touching pianissimi. As Senta, Daniela Köhler is deranged yet robust. The rest of the cast sounds strained and hoarse, though all could have delivered more nuanced performances with a little more sensitivity on the podium.
Under its previous director, Barrie Kosky, the Komische Oper developed a signature style of high-camp hysteria. Fritsch seems determined to out-camp the campest. To be fair, the public laughs along with him, and the evening is warmly applauded. But this opera can be so much more — a tale of sacrifice or delusion, of a dysfunctional family and a hostile community, a chilling glimpse of the supernatural. Fritsch’s characters have as much personality as Lego figurines. Why should we care?
★★☆☆☆
To December 29, komische-oper-berlin.de
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