The Flying Dutchman by Joachim Herz

We invite you to a screening of The Flying Dutchman (Der fliegende Holländer), directed by Joachim Herz. A screening in our ongoing film series German Cinema in Focus curated by Shivani. Currently being shown are a selection of Films from East Germany.

In order to escape her narrow and restrictive life, Senta, the daughter of a rich shipowner, seeks refuge in her fantasies and dreams. In this realm of imagination, a bold and restless sea captain, the Flying Dutchman, who is cursed to wander the seas forever appears to her. In her obsessive dreams, Senta frees this man through her love for him.

Centered around the theme of"redemption through love", Der fliegende Holländer is a German-language opera with libretto and music by Richard Wagner, who conducted the premiere at the Königliches Hoftheater Dresden in 1843. The opera is based on the myths of a legendary phantom ship (The Flying Dutchman), allegedly never able to make port, but doomed to sail the sea forever.

The Flying Dutchman 
by Joachim Herz
1964 | 101 Min. | B&W | German with English subtitles | with the music of Richard Wagner

Joachim Herz (b. 1924, Dresden), one of the most influential and innovative European musical theater directors of the twentieth century. His 1977 debut at the Berlin Komische Oper was with the Brecht & Weill satirical opera Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, which was also recorded for East German television. His subsequent staging of The Flying Dutchman in 1962, at the invitation of Walter Felsenstein, and following productions in Leipzig (1962) and at Moscow’s Bolshoi Theater (1963) prompted an invitation to make a cinematic adaptation, the only film he ever made. Herz left the Komische Oper in 1981, possibly because of his dealings with the ensemble and GDR officials, and worked in London and Munich. 

After his death in 2010, the British magazine Opera Now noted: “His Wagner productions in particular have proved ground-breaking, although his enormous contribution to revolutionary post-war changes in opera production has not always been acknowledged.”

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