Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Richard Laing likes the cut of this Dutchman’s jib

Review of Der fliegende Holländer, directed Py, conducted Minkowski, Theater an der Wien, 2015 (Naxos, 1 DVD).

March 2020, Volume 14, Number 1, 71–4.

For his production of Der fliegende Holländer at the Theater an der Wien, Olivier Py has made a startling addition to the crew roster. Satan himself, frequently invoked in the libretto, and the apparent author of the Dutchman’s doom, is given material form in a performance of sinuous muscularity by the dancer Pavel Strasil. As the overture begins, Strasil sits at a make-up table in front of the proscenium arch, applying his black face-paint; as the overture ends he summons the audience to observe the unfolding drama, bridging the worlds of spectator and performer. Satan observes and reacts to much of the action, but interacts directly only with the Dutchman, with whom he has an uneasy partnership. Yet for all its apparent innovation, this directorial addition was perhaps inspired by Wagner himself. In his ‘Bemerkungen zur Aufführung der Oper Der fliegende Holländer’ (Remarks on the Performance of the Opera Der fliegende Holländer) the composer writes that as the Dutchman addresses the ‘angel of God’, ‘wir müssen einen “gefallenen Engel” selbst vor uns sehen’ (we must see before us a veritable ‘fallen angel’). Wagner was referring to the outward appearance of the Dutchman, but it was surely only a matter of time before a director would take Wagner literally, and insert the original ‘fallen angel’ into the action.