THE
FLYING DUTCHMAN
Welsh
National Opera at the Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff ***
The show may have been advertised as The Flying Dutchman,
but Jack Furness’ production in fact began as Call the Midwife and ended as The
Rite of Spring.
Wagner’s wonderful, vivid overture went for nothing as we
were treated to a faddish dumbshow prequel during its delivery (sorry about the
unintended pun) showing a woman in childbirth. My heart had sunk when I saw in
the cast list “Senta’s Mother”, when no such character exists; we were then
introduced to a tiny Senta running round and round the stage after her mother’s
death, and then a slightly older Senta. This was obviously going to be a focus
upon the woman who redeems the Dutchman.
Overture dealt with, we were at last straight into the plot
of the opera, Wagner’s music painting salty, storm-blown pictures which in
these cash-strapped times Elin Steele’s heroic designs were unable to show. We
saw no ships, though the nautical theme was conveyed by the sailors shaping
themselves into the shape of a boat, and by their occasional staggering gait,
and in fact the only visual resource was a mass of swirling cloud topped by a
flat line apparently evoking the horizon.
Lizzie Powell’s lighting designs helped out resourcefully,
though the emphasis was frequently on darkness. The only real brightness came
when we were at last with the now-mature Senta in her father Daland’s house,
singing to her friends the ballad of the legend of the doomed Flying Dutchman
with whom she is obsessed.
Rachel Nicholls, such an experienced Wagner singer whom I
have admired at Longborough Festival Opera, showed us every facet of Senta’s
character, her vocal nuances gradually accumulating into unleashed visionary
power as she commits to the Dutchman whom her father has brought home in order
to barter her hand in exchange for the cursed sailor’s accumulated wealth. Such
a pity that Wagner gives such engaging music to such a repellently
paternalistic figure.
Simon Bailey paced his voice wonderfully in the demanding
role of the Dutchman, whether ruminating or railing, and James Creswell made an
efficient, bluff Daland. Leonardo Caimi had some strained moments as Erik,
Senta’s whingeing childhood sweetheart, and in fact, as in so many
presentations, the most sympathetic tenor solos came from the Steersman, here
Trystan Llyr Griffiths.
The WNO Chorus were at their resounding best, and remarkably
agile of movement, not least in the extended party scene near the end, and the
generally excellent orchestra (a few incidental brass blips aside) flowed and
surged warmly under Tomas Hanus, in this his last production as WNO music
director (worryingly, no successor has yet been announced, perhaps disappointed
that WNO will not be visiting the UK’s second city with its magnificent
Hippodrome at all next year).
Jack Furness’s direction was generally workmanlike. He had
the ingenious idea of having a silent procession of the Dutchman’s previous lovers who had failed the fidelity test, but then had them painstakingly
adjusting the sheets of a bed far backstage, raising expectations that the
chorus would part at the end of the festivities to reveal Senta and the
Dutchman consummating their relationship. That didn’t happen.
Instead we saw Senta committing herself to the Dutchman by
running round and round the stage (remember the prequel?), until she collapsed,
dead – yes, the Rite of Spring.
Christopher Morley
*At Birmingham Hippodrome May 7