In just under five years, Opera North has transformed itself from a company that largely avoided Wagner to establishing a new paradigm for the way his operas might be presented. To describe the company’s concert-hall Ring cycle – for which complete tetralogies are scheduled next year – as “semi-staged” seems a major injustice. Rather it was a quasi-cinematic experience in which Richard Farnes’s conducting and Peter Mumford’s video design aligned in a perfect theatrical storm.
A perfect storm is how their current collaboration commences, as broiling images of an angry sea accompany Wagner’s orchestral recollection of a harrowing voyage that washed him on to the shores of Norway in 1839, inspiring his first mature opera.
If anything, the digital approach is even better suited to the Dutchman than the Ring, as there’s a concise drama bobbing about on the vast swells of music, especially in the original 1843 version, which surges through a single two-and-a-half-hour span without pause for an interval. Mumford’s visual touchstones – bleached skulls, vampiric red silk, blackened skies – serve to underline that the Flying Dutchman belongs to realm of gothic fantasy rather than the Germano-Nordic myths Wagner would mine for the rest of his career.
It better accounts for some of the work’s motivational inconsistencies that Béla Perencz presents the Dutchman less as a form of salt-sprayed proto-Wotan than a pale and interesting Byronic antihero, with whom Alwyn Mellor’s thrillingly ardent Senta has formed an irrational obsession. There’s also a slight advance in the costume department – the production doesn’t feel quite as budget-conscious as the Ring, whose Valkyries supplied their own evening gowns. Fotini Dimou’s designs add a certain sparkle, encrusting the Dutchman in crushed shells and seaweed, as if the contents of Davy Jones’s locker have been tipped over his head.
Mati Turi supplies sturdy supplication as Senta’s rejected suitor Erik; and the dry-toned Mats Almgrem brings a covetous gleam to the role of Daland that makes you believe he would barter his daughter to the first undead mariner to wash up on the beach.
Opera North’s chorus and orchestra continue to accrue the momentum you might expect from a company enjoying such a Wagnerian run of form. Even the wishy-washy ending that sinks many stage productions is neatly resolved by Mumford’s final image - a perfect, yearning expression of hands across the ocean.
• At Sage Gateshead, 3 July (box office: 0191-443 4661); Symphony Hall, Birmingham, 5 July (box office: 0121 780 3333). Tour details.
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