The Flying Dutchman in Bayreuth. There is no one about, but soon a mother with her young boy will arrive, then a man, then villagers bringing folding IKEA chairs and tables on and off stage. The mother, as we will soon understand, is a street prostitute, kissing a client passionately precisely as the theme of Senta’s love-redemption sounds, only soon to be rejected not only by men, but also by the villagers. Shattered, she hangs herself, dangling from a window just above where her son is sitting. During the entire Overture, villagers come in and out, as if in an Alain Resnais film. The boy’s ‘Traumatic Memory Imprinting’ catches the facial features of someone we will meet later on in the opera: a then-young Daland, the merchant, and Senta’s soon-to-be father. The mother? No worries. Tcherniakov has turned Senta’s governess, Mary, into his wife.
