The Flying Dutchman – review

The Flying Dutchman (below) was so nearly Wagner's answer to Macbeth: he initially set the opera in Scotland, only relocating it to Norway during rehearsals for the premiere. By restoring the original location and names, then, Scottish Opera's new production brings the drama back home. Director Harry Fehr has more sense than to go in for tartanalia, though, or the Romantic mists of Walter Scott's Scotland (the country Wagner would have envisaged). After a sturdy overture, the curtain rises on a 1970s northeast fishing town – Peterhead, perhaps, or Fraserburgh – with a granite-grey harbour and a corrugated-iron-clad, greasy spoon cafe. The details – skooshy ketchup bottles, polystyrene cups – are subtle but spot-on. Front-of-stage sits a staunch commercial wheelie bin.

Into this distinctly unmythical world, Fehr gathers a cast of plausible folk. The Dutchman (Peteris Eglitis) staggers off an oil tanker and collapses behind the bin. The Helmsman (Nicky Spence in scene-stealing fettle) is a cheeky chappy, hormone-charged and boozy. Donald (Scott Wilde) is the local Big Man; George (Jeff Gwaltney) is a minister as well as hunter, which thickens his hold over Senta (powerfully performed by Rachel Nicholls). She is isolated and unstable, cowering at doorways while the other women snigger.

In such a region-specific setting, the German text jars; surely an English translation – or Scots, or even Doric – would have been a better fit. The dreamer in me also wonders if Scottish Opera missed a trick by not staging the opera in situ: on an oil tanker, or in a shipyard. Still, it's a thoughtful and thought-provoking production, with fine playing from the orchestra under Francesco Corti and robust singing from the chorus and cast. The weakest link is the Dutchman himself: Eglitis debuts in the role and hasn't yet found the vocal colour or dramatic pathos to pull it off.