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Edgaras Montvidas as Erik/ Steersman, Layla Claire as Senta and Robert Hayward as The Dutchman with members of the Chorus of Opera North (Photo: James Glossop)

Designed by Joanna Parker (also responsible for the video element) and lit by Kevin Treacy, Annabel Arden’s new production of Wagner’s opera – sung in German, though marketed in English – pretty well entirely removed the sea and ships from the composer/librettist’s scenario. 

These were replaced -- rather strangely, one might think -- with a first act set in the UK Home Office, with Daland (bass Clive Bayley on confident, focused form) the Home Secretary and (later on) contralto Molly Barker making her vocal presence felt as Mary, formerly Senta’s nurse but here the Home Secretary’s Secretary. 

With the chorus described as Daland’s staff (essentially civil servants), plus ‘women workers and the dispossessed’, only the character of the Steersman retained a nautical connection: on striking form, tenor Edgaras Montvidas also sang Erik – a doubling that didn’t seem to make any dramatic point. The disparity with Wagner’s text was confusing. 

With additional spoken sections at the beginning of each of the three acts drawn from the lives and experiences of persons seeking asylum in the UK, the theme had shifted from damnation and redemption on a personal and supernatural level to the ongoing refugee crisis of our time, also providing a reminder of the company’s status as a Theatre of Sanctuary, granted in 2018 and subsequently conscientiously maintained. 

Yet however good the intentions, this thematic realignment weakened the piece as a drama; the result was not one of Arden’s more successful shows. 

Robert Hayward as The Dutchman with the Chorus of Opera North (Photo: James Glossop)

Trying to remove the lives of mariners, alive or undead, from the piece hit the buffers in the shape of powerful choral singing and thrillingly committed orchestral playing from Opera North’s forces under the conviction conducting of company music director Garry Walker; there we heard loud and clear the storm and stress of the sea and ships, and those sailing in them. 

The psychological intensity of the two leading roles was also powerfully realised. Bass-baritone Robert Hayward brought the stygian quality and varied but substantial quantity of tone required to define Wagner’s heroic villain, his inner torment superbly realised. 

Unable to sing on the first night (when she had apparently walked the role with Mari Wyn Williams providing the vocals), at the second performance (February 8) soprano Layla Claire still ran into a handful of problematic phrases towards the top of her voice, but elsewhere her well-produced, shaded lyric tone helped her draw a complex picture of Senta, weirdly obsessed with a man she has never met.