The Theater an der Wien, which prides itself on pushing the directorial envelope hard, breaks form, jobbing in a hand-me-down production of The Flying Dutchman. Designed and directed by Philipp Stölzl as a gripping Gothic thriller for Theater Basel in 2009, it transferred to Berlin’s Staatsoper Unter den Linden in 2015, enjoying regular revivals through last year. By contemporary standards, the liberties Stölzl takes scarcely register. Rather than ply their spinning wheels, the mariners’ stay-at-home womenfolk work in the village cannery, singing Wagner as they pack fish. Hey! It’s choir practice! But there’s a spine-tingling coup de théâtre when all the undead brides who broke their vow of fidelity to the Dutchman pass before our eyes like so many overdressed souls from hell. (This isn’t in Wagner, but boy!, it works.) The score is played as originally conceived, like a movie, in three continuous scenes, and the end is violence, minus the later goo of transcendence. Going on two decades since its creation, Stölzl’s is hardly the most radical Dutchman you’ll see this season (check our listing for Milo Rau’s at Berlin’s Deutsche Oper). But it’s a corker—and just might remind you why you got hooked on opera in the first place. The intense Hawaiian baritone Jordan Shanahan stars as the Dutchman, opposite the thrilling Ambur Braid as Senta, the Norwegian bookworm who breaks his curse. —Matthew Gurewitsch