Saturday 1 February 2025
Grand Theatre, Leeds
****
A superbly sung and acted new production, exploring the plight of refugees
In 2018, Opera North became the first opera company in the UK to be awarded Theatre of Sanctuary status, to recognise the steps taken,
“to ensure refugees and those seeking sanctuary in the city feel included, valued and celebrated through increased accessibility to the arts.“
In 2019, the company staged Martinů’s opera The Greek Passion, which is specifically about refugees. It’s not immediately apparent that Wagner’s opera The Flying Dutchman is also about refugees, with its tales of a speeding ghost ship, a sea captain with untold riches, women spinning cloth, redemptive love and transfiguration. But director Annabel Arden and designer Joanna Parker made a surprisingly compelling case last Saturday in this new production for Wagner’s opera to have a strong refugee theme.
Wagner himself knew what it was like to be a refugee. The opera was partly inspired by his flight aged 27 from Riga to Paris in 1839, during which he and his first wife Minna Planer suffered two terrifying storms at sea. They were stowaways on a merchant ship heading for England. Their passports were withdrawn, and Wagner’s family had abandoned him due to a ‘disagreement with your direction of life.’ His words describing his experience as an exile have contemporary resonance; he was ‘turned away from every door… dragging myself from street to street.’
The programme note points out that the central character of the Dutchman can be viewed as a refugee, a stateless character endlessly travelling the world, unable to find rest. The author, Suzanne McGrath Dale had previously drawn the parallel with contemporary life,
“Today there are many like the Dutchman who can find no port, no place to land. A dichotomy of law has developed which effectively prevents these newer Dutchmen from finding a harbour.”
Wagner’s libretto makes the Dutchman’s predicament very clear. Daland describes him as ‘ banished from his native land’. The Dutchman describes himself as ‘a foreigner’ and he sings,
“It’s impossible, I think, to name
all the countries where I’ve been;
the only one for which I yearn
I never find, my homeland.”
At the start of each of the three acts of the opera, we heard the moving recorded testimony of refugees who had crossed the sea, like Wagner and the Dutchman before them. Before the overture, we heard the voice of the sole survivor of 42 people who died at sea. We saw the poignant image, projected on the stage curtain, of a refugee floating in limbo between two images of the sea mirrored at the top and bottom of the screen. The shadowy figures of refugees shuffled across the stage, one carrying a baby. The image of the refugee floating in space reappeared on a screen during Act III, a bitter commentary on the drunken partying of Daland and his crew.
The Dutchman, magnificently sung and acted by Robert Hayward, was dressed in black like the refugees, with unkempt hair and careworn features. His stunning stage presence drew us into the depths of the Dutchman’s soul with a superb range of vocal colours. As Wagner wrote, an ideal performance must express his ‘utter weariness and despair’ and he must ultimately become ‘a human being through and through’ rather than a mythic, ghostly figure. Of course, a crucial difference between the Dutchman and many refugees is his immense wealth. But as he says, ‘Never shall I reach my home: what avails the wealth I’ve won?’
Daland, excellently sung and acted by veteran Clive Bayley, was a powerful contrast with the Dutchman. He and his crew were dressed in smart office wear in the first act, Daland immaculately coifed and dripping with the excesses of capitalism. At one point the chorus excitedly waved letters they had received, which presumably contained details of their annual bonuses. Their ship was converted into the ‘Home Office’, and Daland was described in the programme as the ‘Home Secretary’. The Dutchman and his crew were ‘displaced people seeking refuge.’
Bayley played the role with some humour, partly based on a satire of capitalism. His disdain for the scruffy Dutchman changed to delight when he learned he was being offered riches in return for sanctuary. He raised a laugh when he chased Mary, his secretary (characterfully played by Molly Barker) with a lascivious glint in his eye. Wagner wrote, ‘I entreat the performer of Daland not to drag his role into the realm of comedy’, describing him as a ‘rough and hardy character.’ Bayley played him as brutal, cynical and avaricious, a contemporary take on roughness and hardiness disguised by a smart suit. And there is Wagnerian precedent in this portrayal. According to Katherine Syer, Wagner’s grandson Wieland, directing the opera in 1959, took a more extreme comic approach,
“Wieland [Wagner] approached Daland… as a sharply contrasting comic caricature, rejecting Wagner’s 1852 caution against just such a portrayal.”
Before the opera began, it was announced that Daland’s daughter Senta would be ‘walked through’ by soprano Layla Claire and sung by Mari Wyn Williams due to Claire’s illness. Disappointment turned to astonishment when the two women created a stunning composite of the role between them. Claire acted the part with great versatility and dramatic verve, lip-syncing perfectly with Wyn Williams who stood at the side of the stage with a score singing the part with a golden tone, intensely powerful and emotive. This was Wyn Williams’ debut with Opera North; hopefully she will return to the stage again soon.
Claire played Senta as an otherworldly young woman, dressed like a teenager at a pop festival – she described herself as a ‘child’ – in contrast with the more conventionally dressed women of the chorus. She also dressed in a hat and coat at times, matching the Dutchman’s costume and also showing that she would eventually become united with him. The fact that the characters were two halves of the same person was stressed by a projection in Act III showing two halves of the characters’ faces creating a single face.
The central part of the production was the extraordinary duet between Senta and the Dutchman. John Deathridge describes the scene as ‘for singers and listeners alike… one of the most exhausting numbers in the opera… it sounds heavy handed.’ Last Saturday, the scene was spellbindingly sung and intensely dramatic. As has often been pointed out, it’s not a conventional love scene, more a meeting of minds powered by Senta’s deep desire to redeem the Dutchman, to be released from his curse, and his desire for release. In a fascinating staging, the two sat across from each other at either end of a long table. Senta mounted the table and crawled towards the Dutchman with a full glass of red wine (see image above), pouring the wine into his glass as the fluids mingled and overflowed. In other circumstances, this could have been erotic and suggestive, but here it showed Senta’s sacred purpose and purity of heart. The wine became a sacrament, or a metaphor for Senta’s supreme sacrifice.
Another pivotal scene was Senta’s response to Erik’s gripping monologue about his dream, in which he described her meeting with the Dutchman. The story transfixed Senta; Wagner describes her in his stage directions as ‘sinking into a magnetic sleep’. This brought out the psychological drama at the heart of the opera. Senta had a vision of the Dutchman as Erik narrated the story, and clasped him as if he were the Dutchman, and writhed in spiritual ecstasy. Erik, who also played the Steersman, sang his parts beautifully with a ringing, Italianate tone and passionately lyrical tone in his Act III aria; in another opera, he would have been the ideal romantic hero.
The main characters were superbly supported by the Chorus, who sang with great gusto and phenomenal power when required, but also with great poignancy. When the women of the Chorus joined Santa at the end of her Ballad in Act II, they were sweet-voiced and touching in their delivery, a brief moment of solidarity before they became anxious about Senta’s obsession with the Dutchman. In the third act, there was an incredible contrast between the robust singing of Daland’s crew and the silence that came in reply from the Dutchman’s ghostly crew. The orchestra, conducted by Garry Walker, were excellent, incisive, sparkling and, at times, electric.
Performers
Clive Bayley Daland, Senta’s father
Edgaras Montvidas Erik / Steersman
Robert Hayward The Dutchman
Molly Barker Mary, Daland’s secretary
Layla Claire (sung by Mari Wyn Williams on 1 February) Senta
Chorus of Opera North Daland’s staff, women workers, the dispossessed
Garry Walker Conductor
Annabel Arden Director
Joanna Parker Set & Costume Designer, Video Designer
Kevin Treacy Lighting Designer
Movement Director Angelo Smimmo
Christine Jane Chibnall Artistic Advisor
Sources
Opera North Programme Notes
Suzanne M. Dale, The Flying Dutchman Dichotomy: The International Right to Leave v. The Sovereign Right to Exclude (Penn State International Law Review 359 (1991))
Katherine Sayer, Of Storms and Dreams. Reflections on the Stage History of Der fliegende Holländer (Overture Opera Guide 1982)
Richard Wagner, The Flying Dutchman Libretto, translated by Lionel Salter (ibid.)
Richard Wagner, Remarks on Performing the Opera Der fliegende Holländer (1852) translated by Melanie Karpinski (ibid.)
John Deathridge, An Introduction to Der fliegende Holländer (ibid.)
Further Performances
February: Leeds Grand Theatre (8, 11, 14, 21)
March: Newcastle Theatre Royal (8)
Lowry, Salford Quays (15)
Theatre Royal, Nottingham (22)
Hull New Theatre (28)