The Swiss director Milo Rau and the Lithuanian conductor Giedrė Ślekytė take their first crack at Richard Wagner with The Flying Dutchman. Ślekytė honed her craft with old masters like Bernard Haitink and Riccardo Muti, but whatever musical ideas she may have in mind, she’ll have to accommodate the vision of a polemicist director who takes a chain-saw to all he touches. Rau’s agenda may be guessed at by the following excerpt from the promotional copy. “What does it mean to be a fan of Wagner after the Holocaust? Is there redemption for Wagner, any deliverance from German guilt? The production searches for the answers to these questions via the unredeemed Dutchman of the title, like a road trip movie through German culture and history after 1945 as well as the emotionally charged German-Israeli relations up to the present day. The Dutchman appears as a national metaphor, a figure who is constantly failing to overcome his own history. Through this, Rau ventures a step into painful corners of the discourse without promising any answers that can be easily swallowed.” Gulp. For good measure, the edition features “spoken interventions” [sic] by the Israeli-born performer, opera singer, songwriter, and drag queen who bills theirself as Shlomi Moto Wagner. “With a documentarian narration style and the tools of musical theatre,” we’re further instructed, “the score becomes a space for reflecting on reception and accountability.” (Pass the Excedrin.) Tomasz Konieczny, a seasoned Dutchman with absolutely nothing left to prove, heads the cast opposite Aušrine Stundytė as the unhinged captain’s daughter who longs to lift the curse that weighs on him. —Matthew Gurewitsch