The Flying Dutchman at Teatr Wielki - Opera Narodowa, Moniuszko Auditorium

What a pity that John Barth has already used The Floating Opera title! It would have been perfect for Mariusz Treli?ski’s performance. Rain and draperies of real water whippping the flooded stage surface at Teatr Wielki - Polish National Opera, create not only a visual but also a tactile counterpart of the Wagnerian storm of passions. It’s as if the technical capabilities delineated nowadays the borders of poetry. Music, just as Boris Kudli?ka’s incredible set design, drowns the spectators in a tempest of operatic dramaturgy, taking means of expression from every genre and at least one of the elements. Land and sea, femininity and demonism, The Eternal Sailor and beautiful Senta capable of breaking the spell and thus liberating him, circle round and round in an emotional whirpool between the Scylla of the eternal myth and the Charybdis of its mocking travesties, only to sail out, following the master’s orders, into the pure waters of an ecstatic synthesis.