Review of The Flying Dutchman – Illusion, torment and menace detailed and sung with Wagnerian precision | Opera

IIn 1839, 26-year-old Richard Wagner nearly drowned during a perilous voyage across the Baltic Sea from Riga. It was this experience that he claimed to have inspired the Flying Dutchman, and the legend of a man forever condemned to sail the oceans in his ghost ship gave him the story of his first mature opera. Wagner viewed his text as a poem, and it certainly grapples with some epic questions: birth, life, love, and death.

Welsh National Opera’s new production, directed by Jack Furness, begins with a woman in labor, the wild, stormy surges of the overture coinciding with her contractions. And so Cinta was born, destined, as a little girl, to see her mother die, being carried away in her hospital bed into the great abyss. Senta will be a damaged soul, obsessed to the point of confusion with the story of the Dutchman, whose only hope of salvation, the love of a real woman, only becomes possible when touching the ground once every seven years. Dramatic stories seem to have become a necessary accompaniment to the overture of any opera, setting the whole course in its leitmotifs. The force of this intervention is visible, in the wide circles run first by the young girl Cinta, then as a young woman, which parallels the Dutchman’s seven cycles, and their dresses symbolize the blood-red sails of his ship, all metaphors that return later.

But there are no ships, neither the Dutchman’s ship nor the ship of Daland, Senta’s father, who would exchange his daughter for the treasures of the ghost ship. The turbulent sea and sky are evoked in the muted colors of Eileen Steele’s design and Lizzie Powell’s lighting, the often-evoked menace of enveloping fog. The girls who spin also don’t spin, instead taking control of what clothes they wear next to the party, but the absence of extraneous detail, the occasional sprinkling of strange sentimental gold dust aside, helps bring the words and emotions into sharp focus.

Clarity of German style was an essential virtue of the very musically rewarding cast, and in particular James Cresswell’s wonderful Daland. Dutchman Simon Bailey, with torn sleeves suggesting centuries of travel, portrays a tortured but sympathetic figure, at his most emotional in the final act. Rachel Nicholls’ Cinta was most impressive, her beguiling love for the Dutchman believable, absolutely true to the pitch and beautiful bel canto lines. Tenors Trystan Llŷr Griffiths as the hapless Steersman and Leonardo Caimi as Erik who makes his mark; It’s a shame that Wagner makes both characters spend so much time – it must be said – performing so many choruses, no matter how full-blooded they are sung.

The WNO Orchestra is playing a suitable storm under the baton of Tomasz Hanus, WNO’s outgoing Music Director. This company is desperate to prove they’re not a sinking ship, despite a lean 26/27 season, so catching these few shows is a must. Just don’t expect a traditional ending.