A gripping ‘Dutchman’ in Livermore

In tackling Wagner’s tautly dramatic tale of love and redemption among the seafaring set, the LVO certainly hasn’t made things easy for itself.

With a cast drawn from the elite ranks of the Bay Area’s professional singers and a theatrical production that made canny use of visual projections to supplement the onstage action, this was a performance that focused attention on the essentials of Wagner’s dramatic and musical vision.

On the most elemental level, “Dutchman,” with its other-worldly sea captain condemned to roam the world in perpetuity, slots right into the tradition of Gothic yarn-spinning.

[...] as he moved into his early period of creative mastery, Wagner was also exploring the themes that would preoccupy him throughout his career, particularly redemption through love and the conflicts it can bring.

Video of the crashing waves served as both a backdrop and a player in the drama, without upstaging Jean-François Revon’s economical set design, and the emotional struggles of the characters — particularly the love triangle among Senta, her betrothed Erik, and the Dutchman himself — registered with striking immediacy.

Artistic and Music Director Alexander Katsman elicited powerful playing from the orchestra in the opera’s most emphatic, brass-laden passages, but other parts of the score sounded undercooked, and his deliberate tempo choices didn’t always help.

Philip Skinner brought robust vocal tone and tragic grandeur to the title role, not just in the great opening monologue (Die Frist ist um) that establishes his character and plight, but throughout the rest of the opera as well.