In Richard Wagner’s early opera “Der Fliegende Holländer” (“The Flying Dutchman”), a ship’s captain is satanically cursed to roam the seas for centuries and is allotted just one chance every seven years to dock and come ashore and find redemption through the love of a woman. The title character, sung by the arresting bass-baritone Greer Grimsley, makes his first entrance when an enormous, space ship-like platform levers open to reveal a pulpy mass of pendulous red matter. The screens behind and around him are awash in surging waves, leaping fire and other semi-abstract projections. The sailors’ chorus, in Act III, takes on a zombie-like sheen as the singers freeze in bolts of blood-red light, apparently haunted by the sight of the Dutchman’s sails.
