Street Scenes: Matthew Rye reports on Bayreuth’s new landlocked ‘Holländer’ from the comfort of home

In a nod to tradition, in which a new production should by default stir up controversy, Dmitri Tcherniakov’s take on Der fliegende Holländer certainly fell into line (and wouldn’t life be boring if every director simply followed Wagner’s stage directions ...?). The Russian director’s previous forays into Wagner have hardly been slight, with Parsifal and Tristan for the Berlin Staatsoper under his belt; and he has a new Ring for the same theatre scheduled to begin later next year. As with several of his contemporaries, Tcherniakov likes to employ dramatic narrative, realism and contemporary situations to unpick the themes underlying the opera in question, even if it entails telling a story at odds with the original.