The Dutchman is a coffee cup-touting travelling businessman who longs to escape from an endless journey of hotels and fleeting relationships. Daland owns the fan business, and is keen to strike a deal with the Dutchman after seeing his suitcase full of cash.
Senta is an artist who works on a statue of the Dutchman while other women create more mundane fans. At the end of the opera, Senta stabs herself in the stomach, which results in the same injury afflicting the Dutchman. As the two embrace in death, the curtain closes momentarily while the music plays on; then the curtain reopens to show a final tableau of the factory now manufacturing the model of the two lovers in embrace.
Capitalism triumphs over selfless love. Some of the scenery, for instance the opening scene with a dark and claustrophobic tall structure with flashing neon of lines and numbers, is atmospheric of the doomed fate of the Dutchman. His duet scene with Senta is also effective, with the two standing as the stage slowly revolves to shift their large shadows on the background screen, creating an illusion of the two figures circling around each other first and then coming together.
For the most part, however, the production is static and dull, and at best does not distract from the fine musical performance of the evening.
Christian Thielemann led the orchestra like a precision machine, and from the first note of the violin, the music of the ocean swirled all around with dynamic strings, finely-tuned woodwinds, and sonorous — but never too loud — brass.
