32 Opera Photo: Jiyang Chen Director Lotte de Beer and bass-baritone Ryan Speedo Green on Der fliegende Holländer Director Lotte de Beer sees nostalgia clashing with nihilism while singer Ryan Speedo Green embraces the villain. Together, they turn Der fliegende Holländer into a gripping tale of curse and redemption. For Lotte de Beer, theatre is an exercise in empathy and solidarity. She sees Wagner’s Der fliegende Holländer as an exploration of polarisation — the biggest political issue of our day. “I recognise two opposing sound worlds: the Italian operatic tradition as reflected in the traditional, nostalgic world of the Norwegian Captain Daland and the restless, unbounded music of the wandering Dutchman. In fact, that music already shows signs of the innovative style of Wagner’s later work, such as Tristan und Isolde. Everyone in Daland’s world clings to a good-old-days mentality, while the Holländer represents a tradition of deconstruction and nihilism.” The myth of the Flying Dutchman was based on a Dutch East India Company captain. De Beer: “That inspired me to set Daland’s world in a decor reminiscent of paintings from the Dutch Golden Age, the seventeenth-century world of Vermeer and his contemporaries. This aesthetic embodies a dangerous nostalgia, a mindset imbued with assumptions of dominance and colonialism.” “Confronting this is the Dutchman, who dismantles that Golden Age aesthetic. Drawn to the lost soul “ I hope to be the bad guy audiences are secretly rooting for” Ryan Speedo Green Interview
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