★★★★☆ A dramatically convincing production totally within Wagner’s world.

Bayreuth Festival
August 2015

Wagner’s first mature opera written in 1841, Der fliegende Holländer, directed with great flair and imagination by German theatre director Jan Philipp Gloger, is not only dramatically convincing but totally within Wagner’s world too.

Gloger is quite daring in his approach, boldly shifting the scenario from a ‘nautical’ setting to a ‘business’ one, taking on board Wagner’s socialist dislike of money, materialism and basic greed as the keynote of his production, turning the opera into a critique of capitalism.

The ‘sea’ is represented as a worldwide web of international money markets, and the Dutchman – a Master of the Universe, to borrow a Tom Wolfe phrase – is as happy as Larry making money off the backs of others but is cursed to sail the High Seas eternally, hooked into the money markets that control him. He can only redeem himself by a woman’s love, something non-material.

The arrival of the Dutchman (strong sung by Samuel Youn) projected a haunting image. He emerged as if coming from the bowels of an ocean-liner but was, in fact, making his way through a CBD dressed as a smart booted-and-suited businessman pulling a black-wheelie suitcase stashed...