★★★★☆ 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 full of bank notes, steering an uneven course through an ‘ocean’ of greed, corruption and opportunism. A scantily-dressed whore cut across the Dutchman’s path at first sight to try her luck but to no advantage. She was not on his agenda!

But he was on Daland’s. Here no longer a sea captain but an ambitious small-time factory owner producing ‘ready-to-use’ table-top desk-fans. Kwangchul Youn relished the part of Daland, singing cleanly and accurately while Benjamin Bruns in the role of the Steersman (now a fussy-minded management accountant) delivered a masterful account of the sailor’s love song while on watch, holed up with Daland in a small dinghy ‘beached’ in an urban landscape – the only hint of any nautical life.

Never one to miss a trick, Daland – whose business interests were a spit in the ocean compared to the global dealings of the Dutchman – was quick off the mark in tantalising and baiting the stranger to his attractive daughter Senta (who wants for something better in life than slaving away in her father’s factory).

The Dutchman demonstrated his immortality during the Monologue by cutting his arm; without blood, his body scars hinted at previous suicide attempts. Gloger saw fit to record these scars ‘black’, while a sexually-repressed, unsettled and dissatisfied Senta built and admired an effigy of the Dutchman, daubed with ‘black’ blood, in hope of release. Ricarda Merbeth triumphed as Senta, her voice employing an extraordinary range of vocal and dramatic colour to produce a glowing and moving account of the Ballad.

The scene in which Senta and the Dutchman meet – with Daland prancing about them like an oriental marriage-broker – was breathtaking and met by the total silence and nervous excitement that only a live performance can possibly yield. The love between them eventually released the Dutchman from his curse, enabling him to bleed normally and die to attain his goal. It also gave Senta the inspiration (the life-blood as it were) to ditch her current woeful position. She portrayed the great socialist hope inasmuch as society can only be built on love rather than from cold, money-grabbing practices, the wings she adorned symbolic of her freedom.

Daland’s factory was impressive, complete with a robotic workforce – replacing the team of traditional spinners looking sweet and pretty in their peasant dresses – attired in light-blue trouser uniforms with matching caps, tastefully designed by Karin Jud. This added a new dimension to their big number, The Spinning Chorus, as they work systematically under the careful eye of Mary (Senta’s nurse-cum-factory-floor supervisor) – a role sung with esteemed authority by Christa Mayer, while Croatian-born tenor Tomislav Mužek proved a strong and stubborn Erik – his confrontation with Senta (about her infatuation with the Dutchman) was moving to the extreme.

But in all of Wagner’s operas, the chorus – the backbone of the whole show – plays such an important and pivotal role, and one has to shout out loud the praises of chorus-master Eberhard Friedrich. Axel Kober was equally impressive in the pit, energising his players with all the necessary fire and power needed to capture the mood and passion of Wagner’s compelling score.

Martin Eidenberger also conjured up some excellent video sequences and Christof Hetzer created a complicated set heavily laced with strips of bright-white neon lighting, highlighting a digitalised-number board continually on the go echoing, perhaps, a traders’ floor of a stock exchange or a time-clock counting the days, hours and seconds left to the Dutchman before his seven-year exile of solitude comes to an end.

And when the end finally came for the chosen couple, true Wagnerian redemption manifested itself into a memento of them in an original fan-based china-coated statuette. Such is their fame! And another business initiative of Daland!