On the occasion of this performance of The Flying Dutchman, leaden skies, chilly winds, and rather heavy rain beyond the half-open canopied auditorium of Holland Park seemed appropriately closer to the North Sea than a summer’s evening on land. That brought added atmosphere to Julia Burbach’s production which masterfully exploits the space of that auditorium to recreate the opera’s ethos. Multiple versions of Senta appear on stage, stalked by veiled figures from the Dutchman’s ghostly ship, pre-empting the drama, and centring the narrative as much upon her soul-searching as on his. As those figures and, later on, the flesh-and-blood sailors of Daland’s ship come back and forth to the stage through the aisles among the audience, it is as though we are brought onto the ship’s deck itself, with sails overhead. The sloping contours of the stage encourage the sailors to teeter around as though on a rocking ship carried upon the storm-tossed sea.
No less dynamic – and tellingly ambiguous – is the plane at the back of the stage on which Senta’s bedroom is laid out: does it thrust hopefully and ambitiously up into the air, or is it sliding downwards to catastrophe? There is no painting of the Dutchman in her room, but empty frames for that picture and the door are equally ambivalent in meaning – open spaces to be filled by the figure of the Dutchman himself, but which can easily be vacated again to leave a tragic void. The Dutchman sinks into the orchestra at the centre of the stage at the opera’s end – as though saved by Wagner’s music? – while Senta proceeds, as if possessed, up and through the auditorium. Burbach’s stagecraft is as compelling as it is elusive in resisting easy answers.
A persuasive performance, led by Peter Selwyn, generally communicates the drama’s elemental aspects in sound. The Opera Holland Park Chorus render Daland’s crew of sailors heartily, and the off-stage members are equally and hauntingly effective as the Dutchman’s ghostly companions. Despite constituting only around half the size of the standard Wagnerian orchestra, the City of London Sinfonia transmits the music’s force and energy, but the relatively smaller numbers also enable a surprising and welcome dance-like alacrity in some of the more light-hearted sections such as in the women’s cheerful ‘Spinning’ Chorus. Only the Dutchman’s monologue of Act One seems somewhat cautious, causing Paul Carey Jones to declaim it in a slightly disjointed manner. His account is otherwise vociferous, though in more introspective passages his tone becomes semi-spoken and approximate in pitch.
Eleanor Dennis gives a finely nuanced but emphatic interpretation as Senta, not least in her Ballad which tells a vivid story here. Neal Cooper is ringingly heroic as Erik, her rejected fiancé, rather than conveying any weakness of character (a few faulty notes don’t create that impression either and can be overlooked). Robert Winslade Anderson’s singing has a throaty melodiousness to it which depicts an amenable Daland, although one note can be indistinct from another and the vocal line doesn’t always cut through the orchestra. Colin Judson is a warbling Steersman.
All in all this doesn’t feel like scaled-down Wagner but is a convincingly epic and theatrical vision of the composer’s first truly great music-drama.
The post Opera Holland Park 2025 – Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman – with Paul Carey Jones, Eleanor Dennis & Robert Winslade Anderson; directed by Julia Burbach; conducted by Peter Selwyn appeared first on The Classical Source.
