O, That We Were There! Richard Laing considers a frustrating recording of an extraordinary performance

Review of Der fliegende Holländer, conducted Sawallisch, Bayreuth, 1960 (Andromeda, 2 CDs).

July 2020, Volume 14, Number 2, 79–83.

‘Wie? Hör ich recht?’ Daland can hardly believe his ears in Act I of Der fliegende Holländer. Listeners to this CD might also experience a sense of incredulity, for the recording astounds and infuriates in equal measure. Wolfgang Sawallisch’s conducting of Wieland Wagner’s Holländer production at Bayreuth can be heard on three other recordings, each with much to commend it. Yet this CD makes even more compelling listening, for it features the 20-year-old Anja Silja’s sensational Bayreuth debut. Silja can be heard on two recordings of Holländer from the 1961 Bayreuther Festspiele, but in this 1960 performance her voice is cleaner, brighter and astonishingly youthful. When responding to Erik’s jealous complaints, Senta’s excuse, ‘Ich bin ein Kind, und weiß nicht, was ich singe’, sounds charmingly naive rather than – as is so often the case with more experienced, weighty voices – embarrassingly disingenuous. Silja’s voice, though occasionally a little flat, is radiant throughout, and her silvery, spinning tone is capable of convincingly expressing both rapture and petulance. Surely no other singer captures so perfectly Senta’s childlike lack of self-awareness. One can well imagine Silja, as Wieland’s biographer witnessed, ‘behaving with all the carefree abandon of a mischievous child, bicycling in trousers round the Festspielhaus, giggling with the stage assistants’.