Der Fliegende Hollander – After the Storm, a Zoom Talk with Jeffrey Buller

HERE IS A LINK TO THE ARCHIVAL VIDEO OF THIS PRESENTATION: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEOHxGrkIyo

When Franz Lachner was conducting Wagner’s Der fliegende Holländer in Munich in 1864, he is famously reported to have said, “Wherever you open the score, the wind blows out of it.” A powerful image of a storm opens the opera and influences much of what follows. Today, anyone who has ever seen The Wizard of Oz, knows what is supposed to happen after a storm: We should find ourselves transported to a magic land. But what would Wagner’s original audience have expected? Although the opera was composed nearly sixty years before L. Frank Baum wrote The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, a nineteenth-century audience would have the precisely same expectation that we do. Vergil’s Aeneid, Shakespeare’s The Tempest, and Bellini’s Il Pirata all open with a storm that transports characters to a mysterious and magical place. But is a magic land actually where we are transported “after the storm” in Der fliegende Holländer? By examining some of the sources Wagner used in creating his libretto, we shall see how several images—the storm, the pilgrimage, and dreams, among others—are combined in this opera to create an experience that anticipates in many ways the themes that later reappear throughout Wagner’s Bayreuth canon.

Jeffrey L. Buller was born in Wisconsin and holds a doctorate from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He has held academic or administrative positions at Loras College, Georgia Southern University, Mary Baldwin College, and Florida Atlantic University. Known to different publics as a classicist, scholar of Wagnerian music drama, expert in academic administration, and novelist; Buller has lectured and performed consultancies all over the world. From 2003-2005, he served as the English language lecturer at Bayreuth Festival. From 2009 through 2019, he worked closely with King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals and the Ministry of Education in Saudi Arabia, providing administrative training and helping to create a comprehensive new Academic Leadership Center. He has published extensively on academic leadership as well as a series of mystery novels on operatic themes (Mysteries on an Operatic Scale). His Wagner specific works include “Eternal Dreamer, the Imagery of Richard Wagner” and “Classically Romantic, Classical Form and Meaning in Wagner’s Ring”.

HERE IS A LINK TO AN ARCHIVAL RECORDING OF BULLER’S PREVIOUS TALK TO THE WAGNER SOCIETY IN JANUARY, 2022

https://youtu.be/8HPf4WP4-jo