Wagner Brought to Life

Opera Pacific’s new production of “The Flying Dutchman” has ideas, but they are not necessarily new or profound. It has a basically capable cast of young, promising American singers, but no fully formed artists or astonishing voices. It has, as well, a basically capable orchestra, if a bit on the puny side for Wagner. The production originated at Minnesota Opera, yet the company has enough pretension to place its top ticket prices at Orange County Performing Arts Center in the big leagues.

But, startlingly, Opera Pacific, which not that long ago seemed perfectly satisfied plunking the occasional star singer on a tacky set and hoping for the under-rehearsed best, has here achieved something rare in opera but absolutely crucial for it to work. Its “Dutchman” is more than the sum of its parts. It has about it, even when a bit preposterous, an unerring sense of theater, and most importantly of theater presented, not just along with, but through music. It understands that opera is an extravagant art in which overdone is nearly always preferable to underdone.

A last-minute substitute for a planned (but never announced) “Fidelio,” this “Dutchman” is the only production of the season for which John DeMain, who was appointed artistic director and principal conductor of Opera Pacific in the summer, is responsible. It is almost inconceivable to put on Wagner, even early Wagner such as “Dutchman,” at the last minute. But DeMain has managed not just that but also to use the production to announce in the strongest possible terms new priorities for a company that, last year at this time, seemed downright hapless.

Although the least demanding of Wagner’s operas in the standard repertory--it’s the shortest and most conventional--”Dutchman” is also the most difficult to make seem convincing to a modern audience. Wagner’s vision of total theater is in embryonic form in this work, with new harmonies and uses of musical motives tacked on to old forms. The combination of myth and modern psychology, which became so overwhelmingly potent in later Wagner, is still a bit clumsy in this supernatural story of the wandering Jew of the ocean. Try to become too contemporary with its interpretation, as Julie Taymor did in her controversial production for L.A. Opera a few years ago, and all the work’s internal conflicts turn into full-fledged wars.

Keith Warner, the British stage director and designer of this production, keeps psychology well at bay. As have others, he presents the opera through Senta’s eyes, through the torments of a young girl sexually awakened by an extraordinary worldly figure. Much of this is just sheer, blatant passion. He, for instance, stages the overture with girls--decorous in black and gray, bonnets on heads--primly at spinning wheels while Senta--in flaming red dress so tight she seems about to burst, hair flowing--sits apart on raised chair, eyes fixed on a portrait of the Dutchman, body writhing.

Warner’s set is clever and grabbing. A long room becomes a ship with the help of some props but mostly through lighting and striking backgrounds seen out of large windows. Daland’s sailors are unkempt, loutish. The Dutchman’s ghostly crew are mummies come to life. The Dutchman himself first appears through fog, strobe lights and the glow of red blood like a monster in an old horror movies. More than once, in fact, this production, framed almost as if it were on a movie screen, appears like just such a low-budget horror film, with graphic supernatural specters in a rough, angry world.

With his dark, robust voice, Mark Delavan is convincing as a ghoulish Dutchman, less so as one enduring deep human suffering. Jeanne-Michele Charbonnet has a voluptuous voice that can be impressive at its steadiest--she is stunning in Senta’s ballad--and she gamely throws herself about the stage with extravagant, if somewhat artificial, abandon. Ian DeNolfo is a dutiful, heroic sounding Erik; Charles Austin, an angry, gruff Daland; Steven Tharp, an interesting combination of a surly but honey-toned Steersman. The chorus is given a strong workout by Warner. DeMain conducts with assurance and moments of poetry.

This is not a production of star performances. One can hear better singing, better playing elsewhere. But Wagner immediately brought to life is not so readily encountered.

If this is to be the new Opera Pacific, then it is exactly what Southern California needs.

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* “The Flying Dutchman” repeats tonight and Saturday at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m., Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa, $28-$131. (714) 556-2787.