Opera Reviews
29 March 2024
Untitled Document

An illuminating and revelatory Dutchman



by Colin Anderson
Wagner: The Flying Dutchman
English National Opera
28 April 2012

Photo: Robert WorkmanIt was an inclement evening travelling to ENO. If hardly a storm at sea, the weather was appropriate for The Flying Dutchman, here newly produced. Anchors aweigh, the overture was given a thrilling and sensitive outing, the ENO Orchestra on top form under Edward Gardner who really drove the music to its tempestuous best while seamlessly yielding for the lyrical love-tinged portions of the music.

The staging itself, revealed during the overture, is dark, sea drenched (with good graphic images); there is a sense of foreboding and danger. Senta is first seen as a young girl (of the two names listed, I believe we saw Aoife Checkland; she was very confident in her mute role)) who is in bed, hugged by her father Daland, just off on another nautical adventure. She is left with a storybook to read. At first, Senta's young-girl appearance seems like another of ENO's add-on characters, a potential distraction. Not the case, in fact, because one is able to get closer to Senta's later infatuation with the Dutchman - does he exist or is he a creation from Senta's youth that she has carried into womanhood? James Creswell brings a resonant, ample voice to the title role; a real (and human, if shadowy) figure to the audience for all that we may suppose he is in Senta's imagination.

Senta is heroically sung and acted by Orla Boylan; her top notes were fearless, her acting deeply involved with Senta's troubles, not least with her taunting fellow-workers in a factory producing a conveyer-belt's worth of ships-in-a-bottle; one of many nice touches in Jonathan Kent's production, well designed, costumed and atmospherically lit. The one weak-link occurs in what is nominally Act III (rightly, Gardner opts for the continuous, without-interval version, which heightens and tightens the drama) where the party scene (very colourful, in glowing contrast to what has gone before) finds Senta ostracised and gang-raped by the returning sailors. This was a bit doubtful, as is Senta's suicide (breaking a bottle and stabbing herself), yet Boylan throws herself into the required physicality.

Daland is suavely sung by the always impressive Clive Bayley, a conniving father willing to sell (marry) his daughter to the Dutchman for his treasure-troves amassed while sailing the seas. Her true sweetheart, Erik, is magnificently sung by Stuart Skelton and with real ardency for Senta's hand; he is seemingly the manager, if dressed as a security guard, of the ship-in-a-bottle factory.

Consistently fine singing, then, and topped by Edward Gardner's illuminating view of the score, superbly played, (the ENO Chorus also on top form), which is in many ways a revelation, the longueurs that can be present banished in a grand but not relentless sweep and with more hints of Liszt and Verdi in the mix that can be the case. One came away from this production enlightened. And on leaving The Coliseum, the weather was even more inclement (St Martin's Lane was flooded!) but this couldn't dampen the glow one felt for the previous couple of hours.

Text © Colin Anderson
Photo © Robert Workman
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