|
Back
Der Besuch des alten Holländers Bayreuth
Festspielhaus
07/29/2026 - & August 6, 18, 23, 2026
Richard Wagner: Der fliegende Holländer
Nicholas Brownlee (Dutchman), Mika Kares (Daland), Elisabeth Teige*/Asmik Grigorıan (Senta), Keran Carrel (Steersman), Benjamin Bruns (Erik), Nadine Weissmann (Mary)
Chor der Bayreuther Festspiele, Thomas Eitler‑de Lint (Chorus master), Orchester der Bayreuther Festspiele, Oksana Lyniv (Conductor)
Dmitri Tcherniakov (stage director & sets), Elena Zaytseva (costumes), Gleb Filshtinsky (Lighting), Tatiana Werestchagina (dramaturgy)
N. Brownlee, E. Teige (© Bayreuther Festspiele/Enrico Nawrath)
The Bayreuth Festival’s revival of Dmitri Tcherniakov’s Der fliegende Holländer remained one of the most divisive Wagner productions of recent years: a staging that replaced the composer’s metaphysical drama with an elaborate psychoanalytic revenge narrative, while simultaneously achieving moments of undeniable theatrical power. Whether one regarded it as an act of penetrating reinterpretation or an unnecessary act of dramaturgical vandalism depended largely on one’s tolerance for directors rewriting libretti rather than illuminating them.
Instead of Wagner’s supernatural mariner condemned to roam the seas until redeemed by faithful love, Tcherniakov transformed the Dutchman into a traumatised man endlessly reliving the defining nightmare of his childhood. The production opened with an extended prologue in which the young protagonist witnessed his mother’s affair with Daland, her subsequent ostracism by the insular fishing community, and finally her suicide by hanging after both her former lover and the village rejected her. The Dutchman’s return thus ceased to be the fulfilment of a supernatural curse and became an act of meticulously planned revenge against the society that had destroyed his mother.
As psychological theatre, the concept, though a mere derivative of Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s Der Besuch der alten Dame (1956), possessed undeniable force. The suicide scene was staged with almost unbearable realism and gave the evening an emotional shock absent from many conventional productions. The final catastrophe likewise acquired an inexorable logic within Tcherniakov’s universe: the conflict between the Dutchman’s followers and the townspeople erupted into murderous violence, culminating in fire engulfing the village. The conclusion abandoned Wagner’s redemptive transcendence altogether. Mary shot the Dutchman before he could destroy Senta, who survived only to collapse into hysterical laughter and inconsolable sobbing, embracing the woman who had failed to protect her. Salvation yielded entirely to trauma.
Yet the production remained dramatically problematic. The revised narrative generated more questions than it answered. If revenge constituted the Dutchman’s sole motivation, what precisely was his intention in seeking Senta’s hand? Was she merely another victim through whom Daland would suffer? Or did the staging imply that Daland himself fathered the Dutchman, making the proposed union grotesquely incestuous? Mary’s function became equally opaque. Why did she possess the Dutchman’s portrait in her handbag? What did she know of the past? Even after several revivals these contradictions remained unresolved, suggesting that the production’s psychological ambitions ultimately exceeded its dramaturgical coherence.
Even the most lurid excesses of Mascagni’s verismo obeyed an underlying dramatic logic. Tcherniakov, by contrast, seemed determined to complicate the narrative until all internal coherence collapsed. Why, for instance, did Mary—here transformed into Senta’s mother—keep the Dutchman’s portrait concealed in her handbag? Why was the relationship between mother and daughter so persistently strained? Such tensions might have acquired genuine dramatic significance had Mary herself once been the Dutchman’s failed redeemer a generation earlier, but the production never pursued this possibility. Instead, it accumulated enigmas without offering either psychological or dramaturgical resolution.
This was quite apart from the staging’s cavalier disregard for Wagner’s libretto, whose constant evocations of the sea became almost surreal in a production that might just as plausibly have been set in a landlocked provincial town. Tcherniakov’s most grievous offence, however, lay elsewhere. By stripping the drama of its supernatural—and therefore sacred—dimension, he fundamentally altered the work’s very nature. Once the Dutchman’s curse became nothing more than an all‑consuming thirst for revenge, Wagner’s ennobled reimagining of the Wandering Jew legend was reduced to a sordid psychological thriller: at best a piece of Grand Guignol, at worst an exercise in the more purulent varieties of Italian verismo. Der fliegende Holländer derived its enduring emotional power precisely from the mysterious intersection of the human and the transcendent. Deprived of that metaphysical horizon, it ceased to be a drama of redemption and became merely another tale of pathological obsession.
Nonetheless, Tcherniakov did not entirely abandon his gift for stagecraft. His spectacular village set, composed of picturesque houses gliding almost magically across the stage while weaving around immovable street lamps, created one of the Festival’s most impressive visual environments (especially when compared the ravings of this year’s unfortunate A.I. Ring). The women assembled not around spinning wheels but at a community choir rehearsal under Mary’s direction before Senta interrupted proceedings with her Ballad. The intimate encounter between Senta and the Dutchman unfolded inside a glass conservatory while Daland and Mary remained absurdly absorbed in their soup, oblivious to the life‑changing conversation taking place beside them. The third act proved visually arresting as the villagers’ festivities descended into terror and the burning village became the physical manifestation of long-suppressed collective guilt.
Musically, however, the evening belonged unequivocally to the performers. Oksana Lyniv drew a reading of remarkable transparency and momentum from the Orchester der Bayreuther Festspiele. Her brisk tempos, sharply articulated rhythms and meticulous attention to orchestral detail allowed Wagner’s score to breathe with almost Italianate vitality without sacrificing its elemental force. The sea, conspicuously absent from the stage, surged magnificently from the pit instead.
A fortnight after giving a magnificent Wotan in Munich’s Die Walküre—a performance that combined commanding vocal authority, crystalline diction and remarkable psychological insight—Nicholas Brownlee returned to Wagner in the title role of Dutchman, once again demonstrating the exceptional musical and dramatic qualities that have made him one of today’s most compelling Wagnerian bass‑baritones. Whether standing silently beneath the tree where his mother had died or unleashing the great monologue with terrifying concentration, Brownlee dominated the stage through sheer vocal charisma, even if the production’s revenge psychology occasionally sat uneasily upon the fundamentally noble quality of his singing. However, having the Dutchman deliver his great monologue, “Die Frist ist um”, as though recounting a quaint anecdote to drinking companions in the village tavern inevitably robbed his most important utterance of much of its dramatic potency, however unimpaired Nicholas Brownlee’s vocal performance remained.
Having impressed profoundly as a deeply affecting Sieglinde in Berlin’s Ring earlier in the summer, Norway’s Elisabeth Teige once again confirmed her exceptional stature. If her Sieglinde combined radiant vocalism with poignant emotional vulnerability, her Senta proved no less compelling. Eschewing Wagner’s visionary redeemer in favour of Tcherniakov’s impetuous young woman yearning to escape the suffocating confines of provincial respectability, she dominated the stage with commanding theatrical presence. Her sumptuous soprano soared effortlessly through the role’s formidable tessitura, crowned by gleaming top notes, an expansive dynamic palette and an unwavering dramatic intensity, even if her German diction occasionally lost definition at climactic moments. At present, it is difficult to think of another jugendlich-dramatisch Wagnerian soprano who equals Teige in the combination of vocal security, expressive intelligence and sheer stage charisma. Admirable though Nicholas Brownlee’s Dutchman undoubtedly was, it was Teige’s incandescent portrayal that ultimately lingered longest in the memory and emerged as the production’s true musical centre of gravity.
An outstanding Hunding the day before in Bayreuth’s disastrous A.I. Ring, Finnish bass Mika Kares’s Daland proved equally distinguished. His resonant bass, exemplary diction and subtle characterisation suggested a man haunted by memories he preferred to suppress rather than a straightforward comic opportunist.
Benjamin Bruns brought heroic weight and lyrical warmth to Erik, elevating him beyond the stock rejected lover into a genuinely tragic figure whose anguish became deeply affecting. Having made a strong impression two seasons ago as an affecting Don Ottavio in Berlin’s Don Giovanni, Kieran Carrel once again displayed the elegance of his lyrical tenor. His Steersman was sung with youthful freshness, refined phrasing and effortless musicality, elevating what is often treated as a secondary role into one of genuine distinction. Yet Tcherniakov’s concept inevitably diminished the character’s dramatic function. With neither ships nor even the sea present anywhere on stage, the Steersman ceased to be the voice of a mariner gazing across the waves and became little more than an anonymous young man, deprived of the poetic context that gives Wagner’s opening scene its unmistakable Romantic atmosphere.
Nadine Weissmann portrayed Mary with impressive dramatic authority, although her mezzo‑soprano occasionally sounded heavier and less flexible than ideal, sacrificing maternal warmth for stern determination. Her decisive intervention at the conclusion nevertheless became one of the production’s defining dramatic moments. Despite Tcherniakov’s convoluted distortion of the drama, I could not help shedding a tear when Senta embraced Mary and clung to her after the latter had shot the Dutchman dead.
The Chor der Bayreuther Festspiele, meticulously prepared by Thomas Eitler‑de Lint, once again demonstrated why it remained one of the world’s great Wagner choruses. Equally capable of conjuring the exuberance of a village celebration, the terrifying menace of the Dutchman’s spectral crew and the overwhelming force of Wagner’s great choral climaxes, it provided one of the evening’s greatest musical glories. Minor ensemble imprecision scarcely mattered against the sheer splendour and dramatic impact of the sound.
Ultimately, Tcherniakov’s Der fliegende Holländer remained a production that fascinated and frustrated in equal measure. Its psychoanalytic reinterpretation possessed genuine theatrical conviction and several unforgettable images, yet its narrative architecture repeatedly undermined itself through unresolved contradictions and unnecessary complications. Fortunately, the musical standards attained by Lyniv, the Orchester der Bayreuther Festspiele, the chorus and an outstanding cast proved so consistently magnificent that they transcended even the staging’s most contentious excesses.
Ossama el Naggar
|
