A Dutchman on the frontier of the LIVING and the DEAD
Given Francois Girard’s high profile, impressive track record with Wagner in recent seasons, audiences will be taking careful note of his new staging of Der fliegende Holländer (The Flying Dutchman) this summer. The French-Canadian director’s latest foray into the Wagnerian canon will premiere at Festival d’Opera de Quebec in late July before moving to Metropolitan Opera in March 2020. It’s the third Wagner staging for Girard, having already tackled Siegfried in Toronto and Parsifal in Lyon and New York (a production destined for Toronto), to commercial and critical acclaim. The experience of helming Wagner’s later works before tackling the chronologically earlier Holländer was invaluable in understanding the composer’s world, Girard says.
“ was my encounter learning late Wagner, learning the way he constructs text and music to relate with each other,” he says. “I don’t think I would have been able to do without doing first—[ was] a
