Wagner: Der fliegende Holländer

1959 was a special year in ‘New Bayreuth’: Wieland Wagner had now presented all ten works under his own direction, in the first ‘Ring-free’ year since the 1951 reopening – an abomination to hard-bitten old-school Wagnerians, for whom only the Ring and Parsifal genuinely belonged on the ‘green hill’ of Bayreuth. There was once again heated discussion over the guiding principles governing the presentation of the festival. But Wieland confounded and convinced his critics yet again with a ‘rediscovery’ of his directorial idiom, described by him as ‘magic realism’. Musical success was achieved on the grand scale by the brilliant exponents of Senta (dubbed by Wagner ‘the woman of the future’) and the Dutchman – and by the musically modern slim-line conductor, who had made his successful Bayreuth debut not long before in the new production of Tristan (just released by Orfeo – C951183D). Leonie Rysanek, whose singing gave vivid meaning to all the drama’s emotional aspects, also had the figure for the part – in her own words, she was the ‘slimmest Senta in the world’.