Boon Companion: Tash Siddiqui goes Dutch with a trusty old friend and guide

Review of ‘Der fliegende Holländer’: Richard Wagner (Overture Opera Guides in association with English National Opera, series editor Gary Kahn, Overture Publishing, 2012).

July 2013, Volume 7, Number 2, 81–4.

Who did not start their youthful exploration of the operatic repertoire with such opera guides in hand? Or on a shelf, perhaps, proudly watching the collection grow? This collection might well have comprised the ENO Opera Guides, of which forty-eight were published between 1980 and 1994 in association with English National Opera and the Royal Opera, edited by the late Nicholas John. Now the series is being revamped, under the editorship of Gary Kahn, as the Overture Opera Guides. Since 2010, twelve titles have been issued. On the Wagner front, the volume on Parsifal was published in 2011 (reviewed in TWJ, v/3) and the one on Der fliegende Holländer, the subject of the present review, in 2012.