Riveting theatre – but who is redeeming whom? Michael Fuller reviews Jonathan Kent’s ‘Der fliegende Holländer’ in Copenhagen

Review of Der fliegende Holländer, directed Kent, conducted Mallwitz, Copenhagen, 2014.

July 2014, Volume 8, Number 2, 68–9.

The first landfall of Jonathan Kent’s Flying Dutchman was at the London Coliseum in 2012, and the white-knuckle ride reported by The Wagner Journal’s reviewer on that occasion (vi/3, pp. 80–83) was repeated in Copenhagen. On the podium, Joana Mallwitz (sharing conducting duties during this run with the Royal Danish Opera’s principal conductor Michael Boder) paced the score impeccably through its searing 140-minute span, and drew well-blended sound from her instrumental forces, offstage as well as in the pit.