Petra Lang and Vitalij Kowalijow pull out of Wagner opera citing vocal difficulties with demanding roles.

As single tickets go on sale, Wagnerian leading lady Petra Lang and her would be co-star Vitalij Kowalijow have both withdrawn from Victorian Opera’s planned production of Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman next year defeated by the “challenges of the vocal range of the demanding parts”. Their roles will be taken instead by rising star American soprano Lori Philips and veteran German baritone Oskar Hillebrandt in the new hi-tech staging which will utilise cutting-edge 3D digital scenery, developed by Deakin Motion.Lab.

Wagner’s opera concerns a wandering Dutchman condemned by Satan to sail the seven seas as a penalty for blasphemy. Now it looks like that curse has come home to visit 46-year-old Ukrainian bass Kowalijow as well as Lang, the woman whose love he might have hoped would redeem him at last. “Both of their agents have said the same thing – the roles are too high for their voices at present,” said a spokesperson for Victorian Opera.

It’s not the first time that Richard Mills, VO’s Artistic Director and conductor of The Flying Dutchman has fallen victim to one of Wagner’s numerous curses. Last...