FROM AROUND THE WORLD: CHICAGO.(Review)

To conclude his first season as music director of Lyric Opera, Andrew Davis conducted his first complete Wagner opera, Der Fliegende Hollander (Feb. 10). He'll need the experience: coming seasons have him scheduled to conduct, Parsifal and, by 2005, the complete Ring. For this maiden voyage, he engaged an experienced hand, James Morris, showing again that he owns the title role by merit, and Catherine Malfitano, a Chicago favorite essaying her first Senta. Using no intermissions, plus Wagner's original overture and finale, Davis led a strong performance, most comfortable in big, melodramatic passages though occasionally drowning out the singers. (Endrik Wottrich's otherwise impressive Steersman was the principal victim.)

Nikolaus Lehnhoff staged Wagner's melodrama with unusual intimacy and deep feeling. In many productions, Hollander's characters stand in isolation, but Lehnhoff's cast touched, even embraced, one another in often revelatory ways. Most tellingly, the physical rapport between Senta and Erik established her genuine affection for him; the Dutchman's jealousy seemed better motivated, and Senta's sacrifice more poignant, as a result.

Often, however, the visual elements seemed at odds with the story, even by the standards of nonrepresentational staging. The action took place in the hold of a futuristic tanker, with a noisy catwalk flying in and out; a gaping gangway center stage led to unseen lower decks. We never saw the Dutchman's ship. He arrived through shafts of light from an enormous vent that recalled not only a fan but nuclear warning signs. Set designer Raimund Bauer used not one but two scrims, the first a traditional seascape, untraditionally difficult to see through, the second the Dutchman's "portrait" -- a screened silhouette dominating the stage. The sight of it literally knocked Senta flat on her back.

The sets, Andrea Schmidt-Futterer's costumes and Richard Jarvie's wigs seemed wholly, even extravagantly, original, yet somehow familiar, with fleeting suggestions of cinematic fantasies from Metropolis to Alien. With one notable ...