I found it a most perceptive and cogent theatrical argument. We don’t know what will happen to them but one thing is certain – life will never be the same again. As the evening ends, we see them crouching at the front, surrounded by the crowd. He achieves this with the Holländer losing his business attire and instead embracing a new identity and life with Senta. From highlighting Donald’s shamelessness in effectively selling his daughter (the theatre uses the 1841 version set in Scotland), Bieito also highlights the Holländer’s journey from threatening self-immolation (in protest against the system), to his rejection of money by giving it away. His redemption can only come from him rejecting the very system everybody else supports. And yet, Bieito also makes the Holländer a much more rounded and complex character than he often seems. For example as the ladies sing ‘das Schiffsvolk kommt mit leerem Magen’, this links directly to the food in the fridges. Yet all Bieito does is based in a logical reading of the text. It may well be that many won’t be able to see beyond the fact that, other than the life raft, the sea is missing from this production. The fridges are revealed to be full of food including some quite tempting-looking pieces of meat. They sing over refrigerators to which Mary, an overseer in a pants suit, ties a rebellious Senta as she sings the Ballade. The ladies’ spinning chorus is sung by what appears to be a group of Stepford wives – all big hair and big nails. The parallels with the banking crisis are, certainly for me, undeniable. For them, the Holländer is a saviour, distributing money to keep them going. One could say that the symbolism is heavy-handed – the sailors are men in suits who appear in a lifeboat, led by the Steuermann who is a decadent older figure rather than the wistful youth we are used to. In many respects, it’s a meditation on the nature of capitalism and the need to rebel against it yet it also focuses on how the elites have squandered the very money that was given to rescue them. Sunday, January 8th, 2017.Ĭalixto Bieito’s Stuttgart staging of Der fliegende Holländer was premiered in the 2007/8 season at the same time as the banking crisis that hit Europe hard. Oper Stuttgart, Staatstheater, Stuttgart, Germany. Staatsopernchor Stuttgart, Zusatzchor der Oper Stuttgart, Staatsorchester Stuttgart / Georg Fritzsch
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