Der fliegende Holländer - the movie

Pieczonka as Senta (ROH website)

The newest Royal Opera House Covent Garden version of  Der fliegende Holländer didn't get rave reviews in London but luckily I didn't read them before I saw the movie version in Sydney yesterday because, despite Der fliegende Holländer not being my favourite Wagner opera, I loved this production. The lead singers, Bryn Terfel, Adrianne Pieczonk, Michael Koenig and even the purportedly sick Peter Rose (Daland) sang their roles so convincingly that for once I was carried away by the story.

The only thing that rankled (not mentioned by the two UK reviews I read) was the drinking scene. The drunk sailors were not only bawdy but misogynistic (was this a comment on UK society?) After listening to the words of the sailors songs on the ship this felt particularly like a cultural mismatch. (I found a NZ version of the Dutchman last year similarly culturally unbalanced, with the sailors drunk in an antipodean way .... at least the Covent Garden sailors weren't vomiting everywhere.)

Perhaps the overwhelming misogyny of our times (two women are killed by partners or previous partners in Australia every week) has made me particularly sensitive. I couldn't help thinking as I listened to the sailor's song yesterday how wonderful men sound when they are praising women instead of belittling them.

Misogyny in Australia

One women is killed every eight days in Australia by her partner or former partner.  They call it the silent epidemic. Why is it silent? Why are we blind?

We are a society where the pay gap between men and women is now 17% , where business characteristically overlooks women when appointing board members (still less than 19%) and where half the population is represented in the Federal Government Cabinet by a single solitary woman. That solitary woman is vocal about 'not being a feminist'.

Misogyny has become so much part of the political fabric that parliamentary commentators were caught on the wrong side of the fence when Julia Gillard defended herself from charges of misogyny by Tony Abbott in Parliament. They wrote articles chastising Gillard for her speech while the speech video went viral, shared by men and women across the country who were sick of the misogynistic venom that Gillard had faced. Later a choir made music to the speech and I like to think this might be the turning point, a point where we start to rethink our values. 

'Not now, not ever': the choral music version

Now there is a choral version of former Prime Minister Gillard's famous misogyny speech. Gotta love it!

Julia Gillard