In Jack Furness’s new production of The Flying Dutchman for Welsh National Opera, Senta becomes the drama’s focus, even before she is born. Her mother’s difficult labour pains are choreographed as the backdrop to the musical drama of the Overture, before she apparently dies, leaving the young girl Senta to grow up in loneliness, running around in circles in hectic determination and searching for something. Not knowing her mother gives her a background in common with some of Wagner’s other heroes, Tristan, Siegfried, andParsifal. But here that’s framed as the basis of a problematic neurosis or obsession rather than the impetus to more constructive psychological development. Her unorthodox emotional yearning for the fantastical figure of the Dutchman is belittled by her female peers with their more conventional, homely desires and by Mary’s disapproval, however much we may otherwise sympathise with her longing for a better prospect than she and her contemporaries could normally expect.
That her fixation with the Dutchman is simply a fantasy, not founded upon any real person upon whom she might pin her desires, is strongly suggested by the fact that there is no picture of the accursed sailor. Instead, shesits under the scrutiny of the other women who are ringed in a semi-circle around her and stares vacantly out into the audience, before launching into her Ballad. Also, the Dutchman erupts into the dour 1950s world of Senta and the coastal community she inhabits, as an unreal figure from a dark, misty background, in vaguely Jacobean dress suggesting a legendary character or an improbably Shakespearean tragic hero. Two different worlds collide then – the real and the mythical – butneither is redeemed or reaches fulfilment in its engagement with the other, as Senta collapses and is left as a bed-ridden patient at the end. The Dutchman remains an elusive, psychologically inscrutable presence at her bedside, but apparently ready to continue serving as an illusory archetype of romantic fulfilment and emotional emancipation for those who would latch on to that. Sometimes in this production one wishes for more detail as to the characters’ contexts oran explanation as to what motivates them precisely. But it’s in keeping with the production’s dramatic strategy that desire and searching aren’t answered with straightforward solutions – the characters, and by extension we the audience, are denied such easy satisfaction, where the drama is not subsumed under the predetermined narrative of the Dutchman’s redemption. The setting is as visually effective as it is simple, which includes a large canvas with an abstract painting that is transformed, according to the lighting cast upon it, from stormy swirls of colour to a more tranquil image like Monet’s late pictures of water lilies.
In line with the interpretation of their characters here,Simon Bailey and Rachel Nicholls give somewhat reticent account of their parts, at least initially – the Dutchman brittle and dry, uncertain as to the land at which he arrives and what he will encounter, while Senta floats an innocent, naïve musical line that’s almost ethereal. Both gain in stature and power as the drama proceeds, though with more flesh-and-blood passion from Nicholls, as Bailey remains more detached, if voluble, to the end.
Despite the implied sense here of Daland’s being the figurehead of a patriarchal society, expecting Senta to conform with his wishes that she marry the Dutchman (even though this is what she wishes herself) James Creswell delivers the part congenially, with well-rounded vocal tone. Leonardo Caimi’s Erik is the more urgent and anxious as he presses his suit to her, unsuccessfully. Along with Trystan Llŷr Griffiths’s bright, Italianate lyricism as the Steersman, their inclination towards a more conventionally domesticated, settled relationship with their partners contrasts vividly with the Dutchman’s epic fate and existential angst. Monika Swan’s petulant Mary also serves in parallel with themas a foil to Senta’s grander aspirations, seemingly a menacing, wicked step-mother figure at Daland’s side when he introduces Senta to the Dutchman.
In this, his last season as WNO’s music director, Tomáš Hanus conducts an impressively decisive account of the score, impelled from the start with a symphonic sweep. The WNO orchestra’s brass come to the fore, particularly the tubas; and with other sonorities also clearly delineated, for instance from bass clarinets, the richly brooding sound palette here pre-empts that of the Ring. Clearly layered orchestral textures elsewhere give the music space and depth. The Chorus are also on fine form, particular in their nervously emphatic shouts to the phantom boat in Act Three.
With an economy of means on stage, but certainly not of musical or theatrical gesture, WNO show how a Wagner opera can still be executed with compelling ambition.
Further performances to 15 May at various locations
