Der fliegende Holländer

Romantic opera in three acts | Text by the composer | In German with German and English surtitles

Duration: 2 3/4 hours | 1 intermission | for ages 13 and up

The Flying Dutchman is condemned to sail the oceans on his ghost ship for all eternity, without rest, without a destination. Only once every seven years is he allowed ashore to seek redemption: in a "woman who is faithful to him on earth until death". The captain's daughter Senta, who is in danger of suffocating from social conventions and the confines of the village community, believes she has been chosen to break this curse. When her father Daland returns from sea with a mysterious stranger at his side, she immediately recognizes the doomed man from the gloomy sailor's ballad that her nurse sang to her, and burns the last bridges to her predetermined life with her admirer Erik.

After his three early works, Richard Wagner regarded the "Flying Dutchman", which premiered in 1843, as his first valid work ever. With the intrusion of the supernatural and the demonic forces of nature into reality, he drew on the tradition of Gothic-romantic opera and, with the motif of redemption, embarked on a path that was to become decisive for his subsequent music dramas. Wagner condenses the stormy waves of the sea, wild sailors' choruses and the central ballad of Senta into an atmospheric thriller that captivates from the very first note. Michiel Dijkema, who recently wowed audiences in Leipzig with his moving interpretation of "Rusalka", tells of the search for home in his production, but also of the longing for the Other.