OdeM is the only North American house staging this work, with a very impressive cast, led by the beautiful and warm bass-baritone of Thomas Gazheli as Dutchman. Jugendlich Dramatischer Maida Hundeling is Senta, Bayreuth tenor Endrik Wottrich is Erik, and bass Reinhard Hagen sings Daland. All four principals are well represented on Youtube. Rounding out the cast are Canadian tenor Kurt Lehmann (Steersman) and Bulgarian-Canadian mezzo Emilia Boteva (Mary). Canadian conductor Keri-Lynn Wilson is at the helm.

Premiered in Dresden in 1843, Der fliegende Holländer marks the composer’s first genuine success after his three earlier works (Die Feen, Das Liebesverbot, Rienzi) failed to enter the standard repertoire. In his autobiography Mein Leben, Wagner wrote that he got the idea for Dutchman during a particularly difficult crossing of the Baltic Sea from Riga to London in 1839. Buffeted by violent storms, the one-week journey stretched into a three-week ordeal. Wagner was also going through a particularly difficult period in his personal life. Heavily in debt, he was escaping Riga with his wife Minna to avoid creditors. Wagner also got his inspiration from Heinrich Heine’s Aus den Memoiren des Herrn von Schnabelewopski, in which a captain is condemned to roam the seas for eternity, a fate from which he can only escape through the love of a faithful woman. This “Redemption through Love” motif is a recurring theme in Wagner’s Tannhäuser and Lohengrin. 

Compared to Wagner’s earlier operas, the novel harmonic language of Dutchman represents a departure from the more formal and traditional Italian grand opera style. Here Wagner finds a path that is uniquely his own, a style that continued to evolve throughout his creative life. Wagner stipulated that Dutchman be performed without an intermission. It typically lasts some two and a half hours, depending on tempo and allowances for short pauses necessitated by scene changes. The length is similar to Das Rheingold, the Prologue/Act One of Götterdämmerung, or Act Three of Die Meistersinger. This length is considered to be the maximum time a typical audience member can be expected to sit without succumbing to the call of nature. In the not too distant past, Dutchman was often staged in three acts with two intermissions, ostensibly to give the singers a rest. In recent years however, performances given without a break have become more or less the norm.

With its curious mixture of hyper-Romanticism and Supernaturalism, Dutchman is a prime candidate for the Regietheater treatment. Among noteworthy productions in 2012, the Jonathan Kent staging at the English National Opera framed the whole story as Senta’s dream, an approach that actually has had various iterations in seasons past. More radical was Jan Philip Gloger’s production in Bayreuth, with Canadian soprano Adrianne Pieczonka as Senta. With the action shifted to the present day, Gloger frames this piece as a social commentary on the excesses of contemporary capitalist society. As is often the case in Bayreuth, the reception of the production was largely negative, while musically it was ecstatically praised. OdeM has chosen the 1996 Canadian Opera Company production, originally directed by Christopher Alden and now restaged for Montreal by Marilyn Gronsdal. The production gives a strong nod to German Expressionist cinema. The unconventional set consists of a giant tilted box greatly enhanced by lighting effects that are at once atmospheric and oppressive, underscoring the turbulence of the sea and the emotional turmoil of the characters. It suggests that everyone is trapped in a nightmare from which there is no escape. With the striped prisoner garb and occasionally robotic movements of the chorus, it can be unsettling. Without giving too much away, the ending is significantly restaged. It created quite a stir at its COC premiere, and continues to generate divided opinions with each revival. Montreal audiences will likely find it provocative and challenging to most assumptions about this Wagnerian masterpiece.