Double yearning

The main character from Der Fliegende Holländer is trapped forever in a most Wagnerian of places: yearning. Like Lohengrin, the Dutchman longs for normality, yet he does so with a complete lack of willingness to compromise. Wishing to escape his fate, he can’t really be human enough, intolerant to the utmost when facing the incomprehension of the mortals who surround him. Perhaps only Walter, in Die Meistersinger, is a real human being, one who joins the guild for the love of Eva and accepts, in the end, that staying is the price of keeping her and that a bourgeois existence might not be so bad after all. The portrayal of both desire and stubbornness may well be the key to singing the Dutchman. The voice could be coloured with hope, anger and resignation and the pace could be capricious and changing, just like the rhythm of the emotional…