Die Zeit is da! It’s time once again to take that walk auf dem Grünen Hügel as the Bayreuther Festspiele gets underway on Saturday with Katharina Wagner’s already-controversial new production of Tristan und Isolde. To celebrate, let’s go back 45 years to a kinder, gentler Bayreuth with a 1970 performance of Der fliegende Holländer starring Donald McIntyre and Leonie Rysanek.

Rysanek virtually owned the role of Senta for two decades beginning with a German radio broadcast in 1950, a year after her professional debut. She created international sensations at Bayreuth in 1959 and at the Met in 1960, on both occasions opposite George London. In those days the Met gave the opera with two intermissions and the audience hysteria after the Act II duet at one legendary performance lasted straight through the entire pause until the beginning of the third act.

This performance marks one of Rysanek’s final performances as Senta: she last sang it at the Met in February 1970, today’s upload let’s us hear her last season in the role at Bayreuth, before she bade farewell to it at Wiener Staatsoper in June 1971.

Richard Wagner: Der fliegende Holländer

Bayreuther Festspiele
01 August 1970
Silvio Varviso, conductor

Holländer – Donald McIntyre
Senta – Leonie Rysanek
Erik – Hermin Esser
Daland – Martti Talvela
Steuermann – Horst Laubenthal
Mary – Maria von Ilosvay