Der fliegende Hollander (The Flying Dutchman)

Composer: Wagner, Richard

Librettist/Text Author: Wagner, Richard

Conductor: Nelsson, Woldemar

Orchestra: Bayreuth Festival Orchestra

Chorus: Bayreuth Festival Chorus

Chorus Master: Balatsch, Norbert

Daland: Salminen, Matti

Der Hollander: Estes, Simon

Der Steuermann: Clark, Graham

Erik: Schunk, Robert

Mary: Schlemm, Anny

Senta: Balslev, Lisbeth

Producer: Hohlfeld, Horant

Set Designer: Sykora, Peter

Costume Designer: Heinrich, Reinhard

Stage Director: Kupfer, Harry

Television Director: Large, Brian

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Date of Production: 1985

Festival: Bayreuth Festival

Venue: Bayreuth Festspielhaus

Playing Time: 02:16:50

Catalogue Number: A05004637

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For his production of The Flying Dutchman, premiered in 1978, Harry Kupfer chose the original Dresden version of 1843, which has a rougher, more muscular texture than the subsequent editions. When The Flying Dutchman was performed in Zurich and Munich, Wagner himself revised the work, softening the instrumentation and appending the "redemption" conclusions to the overture and the third act. What was the reason for the heated disputes which took place between the conservative Bayreuth Wagnerians and the more progressive lovers of the composer's music? Harry Kupfer's production presents the entire story of the Flying Dutchman as a hallucination, a figment of Senta's disturbed imagination. She is seen by the director as a highly neurotic, even schizophrenic young girl, whose yearning for the eternally wandering Dutchman puts her into a trance-like state, in which her own internal drama is acted out in the form of a vision. By having the character leap through the window to her death at the end of the opera, Harry Kupfer has placed a highly personal interpretation on Wagner's notion of "redemption".