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Der fliegende Holländer State Opera Vienna - Wien Wed 22.Apr 2026 replace me !Der fliegende Holländer State Opera Vienna - Wien Sat 25.Apr 2026 replace me !Der fliegende Holländer State Opera Vienna - Wien Wed 29.Apr 2026 replace me !Der fliegende Holländer State Opera Vienna - Wien Sun 03.May 2026 replace me !The sailor's daughter Senta takes pity on the centuries-old legendary figure of the Flying Dutchman.
He was condemned by Satan to sail the world's oceans until a woman frees him from this curse through her loyalty. One day, when Senta's father returns home from a long voyage with a mysterious man, Senta is the only one who recognizes the Flying Dutchman in the sinister foreign captain. At the cost of self-destruction, she decides to redeem him.
With The Flying Dutchman, Richard Wagner wrote an opera that was unusually innovative for its time in terms of its harmonic structure, instrumentation, characterization and stucco dramaturgy. Although the work is still indebted to the composer's role models Weber and Marschner and at the same time still shows rudiments of the Italian number opera, its overall approach clearly foreshadows the future master of music drama.Richard Wagner encountered the old ghost story of the Flying Dutchman, told with ironic verve, in Heinrich Heine. What interested Wagner about the material was, on the one hand, the mythical figure of the wandering undead who never comes to rest and the idea of the "woman of the future", a woman who, through selfless love, is able to bring about the redemption of the cursed. Wagner initially wrote a draft in French for Paris, but it was rejected. He then wrote a German prose draft and later the corresponding libretto. The majority of the music was written shortly afterwards in just a few months.
Wagner's original intention was a one-act opera emphasizing the fast-paced drama of the plot. This concept met with criticism even before the premiere, so Wagner subsequently divided the work into three separate acts or composed corresponding act endings. Additional changes and revisions by Wagner followed in later years. The current production at the Vienna State Opera celebrated its premiere in 2003 and shows the original version without intermission that Wagner originally intended.
(Source: wiener-staatsoper.at)
