DER FLIEGENDE HOLLÄNDER

Celebrated conductor Valery Gergiev returns to the Met's podium for Wagner’s breakout operatic masterpiece

Celebrated French-Canadian director François Girard, whose revelatory 2013 take on Parsifal set the recent Met standard for Wagner stagings, presents his vision of The Flying Dutchman. The opera tells of a sailor condemned to sail the seas for eternity unless he can find a woman willing to be faithful to him until death. He finds such a woman in the heroine, Senta, who is obsessed by a portrait of the Dutchman hanging in her home. In Girard's interpretation, the focus of the opera is more on Senta than on the Dutchman himself: "It's the story of a girl who is looking at a painting so intensely that it comes to life and will swallow her into death.", he explains.

Anja Kampe, one of the leading Wagner sopranos in Europe, dominates the stage as Senta: “It’s good to finally have her here!” exclaimed the New York Times after the first performance. Bass-baritone Evgeny Nikitin is the Dutchman, Valery Gergiev conducts.

“A visionary new Dutchman!” - Associated Press

“Valery Gergiev turned on his wizardry… The chorus was top-notch… Moody. Abstract. Intelligent.” - The New Criterion

“Soprano Anja Kampe made her belated Met debut as Senta. Her singing was plush and warm, with lyrical sheen in tender phrases.” - New York Times