The Flying Dutchman

With The Flying Dutchman, controversial theatre director Milo Rau is tackling the work and Richard Wagner’s oeuvre for the first time, using the Romantic opera as a starting point for a journey into the political depths of the Federal Republic of Germany. The story centres on a cursed sailor who can only be delivered through the faithfulness of a woman, and who finds in Senta an obsessively determined ally.

Taking Wagner’s ideologically camouflaged preoccupation with Ahasverus, the motif of the Wandering Jew, his anti-Semitism and redemption cult as a basis, Rau turns his gaze toward the long post-war history of guilt, memory and the search for reconciliation. What does it mean to be a fan of Wagner after the Holocaust? Is there redemption for Wagner, any deliverance from German guilt? The production searches for the answers to these questions via the unredeemed Dutchman of the title, like a road trip movie through German culture and history after 1945 as well as the emotionally charged German-Israeli relations up to the present day. The Dutchman appears as a national metaphor, a figure who is constantly failing to overcome his own history. Through this, Rau ventures a step into painful corners of the discourse without promising any answers that can be easily swallowed.

With a documentarian narration style and the tools of musical theatre, the score becomes a space for reflecting on reception and accountability. The music of Wagner’s ghostly opera is coupled with the energetic narration of young conductor Giedrė Šlekytė, who is giving her Wagner debut at Deutsche Oper Berlin with this production. Tomasz Konieczny, who has a wealth of experience in the role, will portray this new Dutchman. At his side will be Aušrinė Stundytė, internationally celebrated for her radical portrayals of women and who will be debuting her portrayal of Senta.