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Speaking strictly from the perspective of an American male guy, if one were to ask me, I’d say that your average American is about as cultured as phlegm. And I mean this only in the nicest way possible. I say this because I consider myself an average American, and not too terribly long ago, I was invited to attend an opera with my mother. While I was able to mostly follow along with the plot and I enjoyed the experience immensely, I pretty much walked away from the whole thing going “huh?”

This is primarily because I was raised in a era during which the Summer Blockbuster was invented. In any given film that is released under this category there is a minimum of three very large and destructive explosions (fifteen if it’s a good one). By “very large and destructive”, I mean “totally unrealistic by any conceivable definition of the term”. Something like this; a main character drops his left-over McDonald’s meal into a trash can and it explodes in a giant fireball, destroying an entire city block and leaving everything in ruins. Then someone comes up with a witty one-liner about the nutritive quality of the food. This is of course totally unrealistic. In real life, if you wanted to take out an entire city block, you’d have to use Burger King.

So you can’t really expect anyone with this kind of training to understand opera completely, which is virtually guaranteed to have a lot of singing and absolutely no explosions. The opera I went to see is called The Flying Dutchman by Wagner. No, this is not a German version of Superman. Don’t be silly. In fact, there’s no flying going on at all. But there is a lot of music and of course it ends in death (I can only assume that the happy ending wasn’t invented in Wagner’s day). For those of you who are not familiar with the story, I’ll sum it up for you here.

The story introduces us first to a guy named Van der Decken, which is difficult to say without laughing, so we’ll just call him Duke. Duke is the Captain of the ship The Flying Dutchman. He and his crew are cursed with some kind of curse that makes them half-dead or ghosts or something (I think they stole this part of the plot from Pirates of the Carribean). They are doomed to sail the seas forever without touching land or eating or seeing any of the Star Wars movies. But The curse isn’t all bad. It’s got a little bit of sympathy. Every seven years, these guys are allowed to go to port and look for a nice woman who would be interested in marrying a ghost, thus breaking the curse and allowing the captain and his men to…do something. I’m not sure I completely understood how that part of the curse worked, to be honest. I don’t think Wagner did, either.

Anyway, this story is about one of those port landings. We are thus introduced to the female lead, who’s name I can’t remember, so we’ll just call her Flake. Mainly because, despite her good looks, she has the sense of a breakfast cereal. You may be thinking to yourself, “Schadeboy, that is such a mean and cruel thing to say about someone.” I remind you that we are discussing a fictional character, here. We are also referring to a woman who, despite having access to a very real man, chose instead to fall in love with a picture.

Seriously, Flake has spent most of her years of life pining away at a painting of Duke, who as far as anyone was concerned, was merely a children’s story. She spends most of her day holding onto this picture and looking at it lovingly instead of doing what all the other ladies were doing - which as far as I could determine was nothing more than sitting at a spinning wheel and making fun of Flake all day long. They also make fun of her very real man friend. I can’t remember his name, either, so we’ll just call him Chip. No particular reason. Chip’s vocation was that of a hunter, and all the women of the town (about sixteen of them at last count) thought that was just about the doofiest job anyone could have. All the other womens’ husbands were sailors, and this was considered top-of-the heap. Who could blame them, though? Of course a woman would prefer someone who spends long days at sea for months at a time, leaving her all alone to wait for him to maybe return, over some Abner who comes home to her every night with food for the family.

While we’re on the subject, let’s just take a look at Chip for a moment. Job of choice aside, Chip isn’t exactly firing with both barrels. He’s got his pick of any woman in town, and who does he go after? The one who is in love with a painting. I’ll give him some credit, though. During our story, he basically gives Flake an ultimatum. It’s either him or the painting. For a moment, it looks like Chip’s strategy just might work, until Duke arrives and throws a monkey wrench into Chip’s plans.

Because up until then, Duke was just a figment of Flake’s imagination, and there was a point where Flake might have actually started to realize this. When Duke shows up and proves he’s a real man (except for the fact that he’s a ghost), Flake loses it completely and decides that if it were physically possible, she’d have had Duke’s babies right then and there. But Duke isn’t convinced that Flake could be true to him (and who would be). So to show her undying devotion to him, she throws herself off a cliff. Talk about your plot twists. That kind of thing never happens in an opera.

Apparently this act breaks the curse. Duke can now be fully dead (remember, he was only half-dead in the beginning) and he and Flake can now be together forever in Heaven. At least, I think that’s where they were. Who could tell with the set? It was just a curtain.

So that’s the plot. Kind of thin, I agree, but you don’t really notice that when you’re busy reading the subtitles. Yes, they had to have subtitles. The singing as all in some foreign language from another country. The part that confused me the most was Duke’s ship suddenly sinking, with nary an explosion anywhere near it. I thought that was kind of sad. I mean, it was a perfectly good ship, and all. That sort of thing didn’t happen to Jack Sparrow’s ship, thus ensuring the obligatory sequels.

Maybe that’s why they never made The Flying Dutchman 2?