Der flie­gen­de Hol­län­der

The stranger they call "Der fliegende Holländer" is different from the men who populate Senta's provincial world: different from the sailor friends of her companions, but above all different from her down-to-earth fiancé Erik, who loves Senta but is not a sailor. An outsider like her, he is also surrounded by an excitingly dark doom: once, as the stories of her childhood tell us, the Dutchman cursed God; as punishment he must sail the oceans in his ghost ship until a truly loving woman releases him from his curse. Senta senses that she is destined to change the fate of the legendary sailor...

Richard Wagner's opera "Der fliegende Holländer", first performed in 1843, is more than just a maritime fairy tale: With the drama of the soul of a woman whose yearning for love breaks the narrow confines of society, the composer here already sets the narrative leitmotifs of later works such as "Tristan und Isolde", "Parsifal" or "Der Ring des Nibelungen".

Director Vasily Barkhatov is one of the shooting stars of his generation. After much acclaimed work for opera houses in Hanover, Wiesbaden, Frankfurt, Berlin, Stockholm and Vienna, among others, he is now directing at Deutsche Oper am Rhein for the first time.