The “quiet dreamland” had been set in motion. Recalling the inertia of his home country from his self-imposed exile in Paris, Heinrich Heine could hardly believe it, after things had been very backward with only few exceptions like the early capitalistic stirrings in the “hill country” of Wuppertal. And now the Germans also seemed both economically and politically to have lost their sleep, but not their dreams (reference to a familiar Heine quotation, “if
I think of Germany at night I can’t sleep”, translator’s note). Across a German landscape taking urban form amid smoke and steam, Flying Dutchmen sailed by in dramatic search of redemption, mermaids landed to exchange their fish-scaled bodies and siren voices for bewildering inarticulation, while artistic-minded merchants’ wives yielded abstractedly in their hothouses to their adulterous urges.
“SehnSuchtMEER oder Vom Fliegenden Holländer” is the name Helmut Oehring devised for his meanwhile 23rd stage project realized in collaboration with stage-director Claus Guth to continue the series of works commissioned by Deutsche Oper am Rhein, in this case with special regard for the Wagner jubilee year 2013. The skein of motives combines Heinrich Heine’s “Memoirs of Schnabelawopski, Esquire”, Richard Wagner’s “Flying Dutchman” which was derived from it, Hans Christian Andersen’s artistic tale “The little Mermaid” and the poems by the businessman’s wife Mathilde Wesendonck which Wagner set to music; composer Oehring and his librettist Stefanie Wördemann cog them together as a composite source of yearning and recharge them with sung, recited and gestured forms of expression.
Born to deaf parents in 1961, Helmut Oehring is regarded as one of the most unusual composers of our time. Starting from sign language, Oehring distils into his music fields of tone and communication which negotiate between what is his own and what is already there. In his new stage work the great gesture of romantic yearning implicit in the sea turns into an individual and social suchness revealing in its multiple mirroring and mutual illumination of text and music its tensely current contemporaneity.


 
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SehnSuchtMEER
oder Vom Fliegenden Holländer
Helmut Oehring

Opera after Richard Wagner’s opera “The Flying Dutchman”, adapted from Heinrich Heine Libretto by Stefanie Wördemann using texts by Heinrich Heine, Richard Wagner, Mathilde Wesendonck, Hans Christian Andersen and Helmut Oehring
 
In German
 

Musikalische Leitung Axel Kober
Inszenierung Claus Guth
Bühne und Kostüme Christian Schmidt
Sound-Konzeption & -Produktion Torsten Ottersberg
Lightdesign Bernd Purkrabek
Chorleitung Gerhard Michalski
Dramaturgie Hella Bartnig
 
Erzähler I, der Träumer David Moss
Erzähler II, der Realist Rudolf Kowalski
Erzählerin, Die Großmutter Jutta Wachowiak
Holländer Simon Neal
Holländer Kontrabass Solo und Vokal Matthias Bauer
Senta/Mathilde Manuela Uhl
Senta/gehörlose Gebärdensprachsolistin Christina Schönfeld
Sopransolo Chieko Higashi
E-Gitarre Jörg Wilkendorf
Am Flügel Matthew Ottenlips
Matrosen, Mannschaft des fliegenden Holländer, Mädchen, Meerjungfrauen Chor der Deutschen Oper am Rhein
Orchester Düsseldorfer Symphoniker