The Flying Dutchman is Wagner’s fourth opera, but the first he considered a keeper. Conductor Valery Gergiev always brings a ferocious edge to the tempest-tossed score. The towering Sir Bryn Terfel was to have starred, but because he is now out with a broken foot, the title role of the gloomy antihero has been reassigned to Evgeny Nikitin, no marquee name though a Gergiev regular of time-tested mettle. Will this be his breakout moment? The balance of the cast is prime. François Girard, most musicianly of filmmakers, directs. —M.G.