Opera North’s 2025 reinterpretation of Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman is a strange concoction but a fascinating one. Its analogy of homeless refugees to the Dutch seaman condemned to wander perilous seas for all eternity, though valid in theory, sits awkward and unsatisfactory in practice. A strength and sparkle of cast and orchestra, though, who all sing, play and act so expressively and engagingly, ensure enjoyment wins out.
It was after suffering a stormy, particularly harrowing sea crossing in 1839 that Richard Wagner (1813-1883) thought he’d take up and tweak the ghostly, centuries-old legend of The Flying Dutchman, turning the tale into a powerful, operatic musical drama. The story, as retold in Heinrich Heine’s 1831 novel, tells of a mysterious, accursed sea captain, the Flying Dutchman, doomed to fight his way through a Purgatory of perilous seas and tempests for all eternity, unable to die no matter how much he might long to. His one chance of salvation is to have an ever-faithful woman pledge him her unfaltering devotion. Since the sailor can reach shore with his ghostly ship and crew only once every seven years, meeting any woman isn’t easy, but… with his next seven years up, he meets a man called Daland who has a grown-up daughter. Enter Senta. Full of compassion, Senta does, indeed, full-heartedly pledge the stranger her devotion and undying faithfulness – even before she meets him! It’s still not plain sailing, though, for Senta, while totally obsessed with the plight of the pale-faced Dutchman, already has a beau called Erik. The jangling triangle of stormy emotions that emerges is on course, of course, for tragedy.
Daland, a seaman in the original version, is now Home Secretary, no less, in a world of money, power and bureaucracy. Former hunter Erik is also now in Opera North’s Home Office, his role combined with that of Steersman on Daland’s “ship” that’s no longer a real ship but a ship of state. Senta’s nurse, Mary (warmly sung by Molly Barker) is now a secretary while the erstwhile chorus of sailors becomes a vast workforce of grey Home Office men in suits, ties and dangling ID tags, working at laptops on clean-lined desks. When political and financial storms hit, papers fly and digital boards flash as panic erupts.
Whether as men in suits, women who spin, make garments and carry clip-boards or in full combination the Opera North chorus sings in superb, spot-on blend. Fine movement direction from Angelo Smimmo enhance their lively scenes and every character has a presence. Particularly fascinating are the spiky dances at the Home Office bar, and the human waves created as they taunt the (invisible) ghostly sailors and then grow afraid. More artistic allure comes in shimmering, silvery waterfall curtains, admirably adapted to other purposes, in dangles of nets, chains and buoys and in the ship-shaped bar, and good use is made of props that can be stood or lain upon, be it long, candelabra-bedecked table with white, wine-stained-cloth, desk, chair or a bar counter that pretends it’s a ship.
The text, sung in German and written in English, adapts in part to the new location but only in small part, while the immediacy of Mother Nature’s actual stormy seas feels more remote now. Projections of non-stormy seas that blow in one direction as dark clouds blow the opposite way with huge, indefinable ghostly shapes rolling slowly round and round don’t really compensate. But under conductor Garry Walker, the mood journeys of horns, brass, woodwind, shimmering strings and rumbling timpani of the Orchestra of Opera North still, at least, have Wagner’s rousing music plunge us headfirst into those seas of howling, hellish tempests, dotted with moments of heavenly calm and catchy, melodic leitmotifs.
Heartfelt words, recorded by real people who, like the Dutchman, no longer have home or homeland and who’ve endured storms on real seas as well as metaphorical Home Office ones, speak out at the start of acts but in spite of their tenuous relevance they feel incongruous and don’t fit neatly with the main work. They need their own opera, perhaps. Fortunately, the singers carry the story wonderfully, every solo, duet, trio and chorus a delight.
Neat, white-haired, be-suited, presidential Clive Bagley brings money-loving Daland to life, adding touches of gentle humour as when he eyes up the Dutchman’s vast wealth of jewels – on his laptop screen. Robert Hayward’s striking Dutchman often just stands, still, mysterious and distant in his long, grey Gandalf coat, long, grey frock, dark hat and grey, Bob Geldoff hair. His bass-baritone and surly demeanour express well his world-weary, self-absorbed longing, not so much for love, but for peace and release.
In dark shorts, tights and waistcoat and then mimicking the Dutchman’s garb, Layla Claire’s Senta is thoroughly involving as she wraps and traps herself in her obsessive infatuation with the Dutchman’s Faustian plight, spurred on by her inflexible, all-consuming desire to sacrifice herself to save him. Claire’s performance on this occasion is all the more remarkable given the fact she was unable to sing a note! Via highly expressive movement and body language she said it all as she mimed her words, sung in beautiful Singin’ In The Rain style by Mari Wyn Williams, dressed in black and dimly lit, at a music stand at the side of the stage. Her delicate, meaningful soprano worked superbly in tandem with Claire’s physical portrayal, bringing a highly credible Senta into being before us. Two Sentas for the price of one? Bravissime! (feminine plural) Meanwhile, vibrant and glorious as lovesick, heartbroken Erik is Edgaras Montvidas, bringing rich meaning and melody to his romantic arias via sturdy expression and ringing, pleasing tenor tones.
Opera North is a worthy Theatre of Sanctuary but the extra layers of meaning added to this particular work do tend to distract, detract or even bewilder. The ending, especially, is rather perplexing and unsatisfactory: after the Dutchman departs without her, Senta packs life jacket, children’s toys (!) and such onto a blanket that we assume represents a raft or small boat, and then – disappears. What she’s done or achieved is not apparent. Has she saved the Dutchman or not? Some frowning and head-scratching to do, perhaps, but this production also has a lot that delights.
Eileen Caiger Gray
