The Flying Dutchman at Festival Theatre

Celebrating the 200th anniversary of Wagner’s birth, this new production also marks the Company’s return to Wagner’s work for the first time since 2003’s Ring Cycle. Director Harry Fehr (The Secret Marriage 2009, Orlando 2011) returns to stage a powerful production that is full of character and thick with brooding tension.

Senta, a young girl unversed in the ways of life and love, daydreams obsessively over a picture of the legendary Flying Dutchman, a tormented soul cursed to roam the seas with his ghostly crew until he finds a woman who will love him until death. Out in a violent storm, Senta’s father meets a charismatic stranger and invites him home, little knowing that his daughter’s fixation is about to become unsettlingly real.

Wagner’s epic score drives his characters from one overpowering emotion to the next. Full-blooded choruses, sweet, mellifluous melodies and an orchestral line driven by the furious rage and swell of the sea combine in a hugely atmospheric music-drama that paved the way for much of the composer’s later work. Baritone Peteris Eglitis, known internationally for his Wagnerian roles, is The Dutchman. Music Director Francesco Corti conducts.