London Coliseum, 16 May 2012

As we are not to have any Wagner at the Coliseum during his anniversary season next year it is some comfort that we will have the memory of Edward Gardner’s exhilarating reading to The Flying Dutchman and the promise of greater things to come. His fierceness, forcing the narrative line forward with virtually no points of respite or let up in the tension, together with orchestral playing finer than it has been for some time, helped to smooth any passing problems which the production might throw up along the way. Jonathan Kent’s approach , placing a neurotic and damaged Senta at the heart of the work, is familiar from other productions, but on this occasion he goes far further in implicating her father, Daland, in her problems, and the viciousness of society towards those who are mentally unstable. The pirate party in act three is at once both hilarious and deeply disturbing, given the way binge drinking can so quickly get out of hand. That she commits suicide using a broken bottle is uncomfortably apt. Towards the end of the run, when I saw the production, I felt no concern about the quality of voices on stage. If James Creswell’s Dutchman was dramatically dull at times it seemed correct in terms of Senta’s very limited emotional development. Orla Boylan rose not only to the vocal challenges of Senta but convinced us that she was a solitary figure in a vile world. Few Erik’s have the stature of Stuart Skelton, which made one realise just how limited Senta’s view of the world had become. He may be only a security guard but he was real and emotionally far more complex than the Dutchman. Clive Bailey’s creepy Daland sees nothing unsavoury about selling off his daughter, and this is the only point at which the overlap between reality and dream becomes confused. Paul Brown’s design brings brutal container ship reality and factory work into a head-on clash with Senta’s romanticism which washes constantly across the stage from the effective video work. Wagner set out to challenge, and productions like are vital in their combination of the highest musical qualities combined with provocative staging. BH