Another valid interpretive question is raised by Roland Graeme. With respect to my hypothesis that Senta’s singing of her Ballad (replacing Mary, from whom she has learned it) is a part of this particular evening’s significance, and of the psychic pull between her and the Dutchman, Roland points out that in the midst of his remonstrations with Senta, Erik says “Und die Ballade—heut’ noch sangst du sie!” (“And the Ballad—you sang [were singing] it again today!”), which would seem to indicate that her rendition of it is not unprecedented. That’s a perfectly defensible interpretive viewpoint. And there is no doubt that the Ballad has been a part of Senta’s obsession with the tale of the Dutchman for a long time. She even hums a couple of phrases of it to herself early in the scene, while staring at the portrait, and I rather imagine she’s sung or hummed all or parts of it many times under many different circumstances, no doubt to Erik’s consternation. She could have sung it before, all three stanzas, at evening spinning time, and Erik could have been present on such an occasion. But everything about the progression of this scene—the other girls urging Senta to sing something, the spat between her and Mary about it, the expectant gathering of the girls around Senta as she begins, all this juxtaposed with our knowledge that the arrival of Daland with the Dutchman is imminent—suggests that this is not the normal run of events. And surely her concluding outburst (“It is I, through whose true love you shall be saved!”, etc.), with its dismayed reaction from Mary and the girls and from Erik, who has overheard the last couple of lines, is something they haven’t heard from her before. Nothing says that the sequence has to be interpreted with this in mind, and in terms of the story-telling, emotional expression, and singing commitment contained within the moment, it probably doesn’t matter much. But one always looks for the strongest possible choice, the one that puts the most dramatic pressure on the situation and is most closely related to the psychological development of the narrative, and will therefore pay off as we go along. At least, I do.

Finally, I wanted to expand on my remark that Erik’s third-act Cavatina reminded me less of a Bellini aria than of an early Verdi one—I suggested Ernani’s “Come rugiada al cespite” as an example—and to incorporate some educated guesswork on the treatment of the above-mentioned high-B-flat “falsetto” phrase into the bargain. (I intended to add these thoughts in a footnote, but their length would make such treatment clumsy. So I’ll record them here. Please consider them integral to the post, as if occurring at the bottom of p. 8.) My reference to this aria may be confusing to readers who have heard it sung by modern tenors, including some who have scored big successes in this role, e. g., Martinelli, Penno, Del Monaco, Corelli, or even the more elegant or lyrical Bergonzi, Pavarotti, Domingo. I am thinking of it as sung by tenors in an older style, of whom Fernando de Lucia would be an exemplar in this piece. His rendition, lingering and soulful, sensitively observant of all the graces, lends an altogether different caste to the aria, and one that is more in line with what Wagner was probably used to hearing. At the same time, de Lucia’s voice was obviously of at least moderately heavy calibre. He had success in a number of dramatic verismo roles, and could certainly have done the same with an Italian-language Erik—check out his Lohengrin Bridal Chamber Scene excerpts with Josefina Huguet. Will Crutchfield points out that the tenor roles in the early Verdi operas, up to and including Manrico in Il Trovatore (you can verify by way of the Muti recording, but with Salvatore Licitra, by no means an old-style tenor, in that part) pretty much respect the same tenor range limit, with A natural at the top, that Wagner settled on, which in turn was that written to by the mature Mozart and Handel. Thus, Verdi was declining the usages of the then-prevalent early Romantic tenor model, whose high extension was sung by means we wouldn’t call “full voice,” and whose “modern dramatic tenor” version was not yet the rule.