Der fliegende Holländer - Schedule, Program & Tickets

Der fliegende Holländer

Approximate duration: 2 hours 20 minutes, no intermission

Language: In German, subtitles in Czech, English

Premiering: January 20, 2022

One of the chapters in the novel The Memoirs of Herr von Schnabelewopski by the German romantic poet and prose writer Heinrich Heine describes the 'Flying Dutchman', a sea captain who aspires to trump nature by sailing through a fierce storm and for his blasphemy is duly cursed. where his only hope of salvation through death is the true love of a woman. Richard Wagner was immediately captivated by the story. What could a romantic composer wish more than to express through music stormy seas, disheveled human souls, amorous passions and the determination to die for love? The main heroine, Senta, embodies Wagner's vision of the ideal woman willing to sacrifice herself to save a male hero.

The Flying Dutchman continues the tradition of German romantic operas by Carl Maria von Weber and Heinrich Marschner. But even if he still stuck to the conventional structure of self-contained numbers with recitatives and arias, with this work Wagner took the path to the style that was to characterize his later work, through-composed music dramas with leitmotifs, connected with specific characters and themes. A dream plays an important role in the opera: Senta lives in a different world, different from the people around her; she longs for the mysterious Dutchman, a figment of her imagination and a phantom she believes to be real. In doing so, Wagner opened up enormous leeway for theater makers to stage the often very narrow boundaries between reality and dreams, or between reason and madness.

The Flying Dutchman premiered in Dresden on January 2, 1843, conducted by Wagner. The premiere in the Czech lands took place on September 7, 1856 by the German Opera Society in the Estates Theater in Prague under the direction of František Škroup. The opera was re-staged by German conductor Karl-Heinz Steffens, currently music director of the State Opera, and Norwegian theater director and designer Ole Anders Tandberg.


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