The Flying Dutchman, Wagner’s first masterpiece, has had a rough passage in the UK over the past few decades. I recall a production at the Royal Opera in the mid-1980s which revealed to me for the first time the possibility that an insensitive director can completely destroy a great work, something which is now commonplace. In between there have been further productions, in London and in Wales, which have done nothing to penetrate the work’s grandeur and freshness, so that the idea of a concert performance was even more welcome than usual. Zurich Opera came over for one night to the Royal Festival Hall and can have left no one in doubt as to the stature of Holländer or the quality of the performers, with one minor exception.
Actually, the performance got off to a shaky start, with some ragged playing and uncertain fluctuations of tempo.
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