"It’s Captain Video time!" Those words kindled my pubescent emotions in TV’s early years, as the medium’s first sci-fi adventure took to the airwaves on the long defunct DuMont network. What was resonating for me was not the show--which was live, shabbily produced, and filled with mistakes we would now view as laughable--but the show’s theme music. I didn’t know it at the time, but later discovered that it was Wagner’s Overture to The Flying Dutchman.

Now that I’m somewhat into my "golden" years, and got to witness Indianapolis’ first local production, not only of Dutchman, but of any stage work of Wagner’s, it seems in a way that I’ve come full circle. The Indianapolis Opera, Clowes Hall, James Caraher conducting the Indianapolis Symphony, and a group of fine soloists made last Friday evening not only captivating but intoxicating in a way that only Wagner’s music can.

The problem for regional companies is that the great Wagner operas (he called his later ones "music dramas") are too long: Five to six hours break the traditonal three-plus hour barrier and correspondingly increase costs. Would regional audiences sit through five hours of Die Meistersinger? Well, it packs the houses at the Met, at Chicago’s Lyric, in San Francisco, as well as all over Europe. So does Tristan. So does any of the four music dramas comprising the monumental Ring cycle. Perhaps the more financially challenged smaller companies don’t feel they can take the risk.

However The Flying Dutchman (Der fliegende Holländer)--an early (1841) and perhaps near-great opera--only lasted two hours and 45 minutes, and so far as I could tell, there were no substantive cuts in its three concise acts. In any case the title rôle, sung by baritone Timothy Noble, showed a consummate portrayal of the Dutchman, condemned to sail the seas forever, or until redeemed by a maiden’s unselfish love. The native Hoosier’s voice was penetrating and forced, but nicely inflected-- proclaiming in his lengthy Act I monologue that his fate was forced upon him.

In his way bass-baritone William Fleck was even more impressive as Daland, the Norwegian sea captain whose daughter Senta would attempt the Dutchman’s salvation. Fleck projected a more lyric baritone to correspond with the kindly but, in the end, rather greedy father. The contrast between Fleck’s and Noble’s voices was telling in their Act I duet: "Wie? Hört’ ich recht?"

Senta, sung by soprano Sheila Smith, doesn’t appear till the opening of Act II. Emerging out of the sprightly "Spinning Chorus," she projects a smooth, evenly centered, rather powerful voice that carried easily over the orchestra--but which was a bit flat on a few sustained high notes in her "Ballad." Otherwise she was most impressive in her portrayal of a sweet innocent caught up in myth and legend.

In his first IO appearance, tenor Timothy Tobin sang the youthful huntsman Erik, Senta’s suitor and the Dutchman’s foil. Of the principals, his was the least impressive voice--at times uneven, and forced when it shouldn’t have been. Norman Shankle, winner of last August’s MacAllister Awards vocal competition, would have been far better in this rôle.

The two supporting rôles of the Steersman and Senta’s nurse Mary were well sung by tenor David Mannell and soprano Kara Schmid respectively. Though Schmid’s vocal qualities were excellent, she had difficulty projecting, her voice barely making it off the Clowes stage.

The real stars of this production, however, were Caraher and the ISO. From the sustained open fifth that begins the overture to the passage of repose and resignation on which both overture and opera end, the IO artistic director had his players and singers integrated and balanced to near perfection. And he made those continually recurring chromatic undulations depicting an unforgiving sea provide the underpinning that gives Dutchman its special identity.

Set designer Constantinos Kritatos provided impressive seascapes in Acts I and III, which in Act I had the bow of the Dutchman’s ship clearly hanging over the stern of Daland’s more modest-sized one--not the safest docking procedure in real life, but on the stage. . .who cares? The Dutchman’s phantom crew were amplified in their third-act chorus, creating an appropriately eerie effect. Interestingly the front of the Dutchman’s ship lost its bow in Act III and, for the life of me, looked more like an oversized automobile radiator--or perhaps the front of a locomotive. Symbolic? I didn’t get it.

Now that the IO has successfully crossed the Wagner threshold, the company needs to consider mounting Das Rheingold, the three-hour Prologue of the Ring operas. There we can glimpse the mature as well as the great Wagner, and do it within the traditional time slot.

Meanwhile I can safely assert that I don’t need Captain Video anymore.