Scottish Opera’s new production of The Flying Dutchman, performed in German but advertised in English, is almost a triumph, and very well worth going to see. I reflected, as I travelled by train back from Glasgow to Cambridge, changing only at Edinburgh, York, Peterborough and Ely, that this raw and in some ways crude opera, Wagner’s first to remain in the canon, benefits from the restrictions imposed by a budget as tight as Scottish Opera’s, though I can imagine the participants not entirely agreeing with me. The production, by Harry Fehr with designs by Tom Scutt, is simple and clear. The opera is relocated to Scotland, where Wagner originally set it, as the home of Gothick, and Daland becomes Donald, Erik becomes George; and the time is mid-20th century. So the Dutchman arrives in a tanker, and the girls in Act II work at sewing machines. The atmosphere is largely created by powerful projections, for which Dutchman is a prime candidate; but not too many of them.
The conductor is Francesco Corti, the company’s music director, and he begins as he means to go on, with savagely rasping strings and rearing brass, and he doesn’t make the mistake of slowing down for the Senta theme to the point where it sounds mawkish.
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