Sailing By: Matthew Rye senses missed opportunities in a live concert recording of the ‘Dutchman’

Review of Der fliegende Holländer, conducted Nelsons, Amsterdam, 2013 (RCO Live, 2 CDs).

July 2015, Volume 9, Number 2, 77–8.

The Wagner bicentenary in 2013 not only refreshed the stage repertoire of many of the world’s opera companies, but also encouraged a boom in concert presentations of the music dramas. At their best, as with the Barenboim Ring at the BBC Proms that year, semi- or unstaged performances can be every bit as rewarding as the latest Regietheater interpretation in the theatre. But in a world not exactly deprived of fully staged Wagner, they still have to justify their existence on more purely musical grounds.