Welsh National Opera return to Birmingham Hippodrome this month with three very distinct performances: a reimagining of The Flying Dutchman, the return of heart-warming adventure Blaze Of Glory!, and Shipwrecked! - a perfect introduction to opera for younger audiences.
What’s On recently caught up with director Jack Furness and designer Elin Steele to find out more about what audiences can expect...

Welsh National Opera (WNO) this month premiere a new production of Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman - and its creative team are promising a show which will sweep audiences away.

First staged in 1843, the opera tells the story of the ghostly Flying Dutchman, who is cursed to sail the seas until he finds a woman who will be true to him. When the Dutchman meets Norwegian villager Senta, who has long dreamed of releasing the legendary wanderer from his curse, will he finally find love and freedom?

For director Jack Furness, it’s the relationship between the Dutchman and Senta, their hopes and desires, which lies at the heart of Wagner’s story.

“You see productions of The Flying Dutchman which are all about the ship, big set pieces and razzmatazz, but we felt that was the wrong approach to take with this piece,” he explains. “It’s a human drama. It’s about some of the deepest aspects of our relationship with life and death and identity and love and recognition of another person. 

“It’s a really poetic piece of work. It’s mythic. We are dealing with mythic characters, which is almost belied by the everyday setting that some of it happens in. But those everyday questions are blown up and put onto a cosmic scale, so we wanted to do a production that embraced those poetic qualities and also embraced the mythic and the cosmic scale of those emotions.”

At under three hours long, The Flying Dutchman is both one of Wagner’s shortest and also most performed operas. Its dramatic score and colourful characters have ensured it remains a production in many company’s repertoires. But, says Jack, it can be interpreted in different ways. 

“You can see the Dutchman as a projection of Senta’s destabilised psyche, or you can think he’s a real ghost and this is a supernatural story, or you can think something in-between. There are multiple interpretations because these characters are mythic in that way. 

“I feel so excited about this production because it allows for multiple interpretations. We are not trying to close it down and say The Flying Dutchman is about ‘this and only this’. We want to explore the full range of this piece. We want these characters to be fully human, completely three-dimensional, and see what happens when we put them in a space together and their various needs and desires and dreams interact.”

Designer Elin Steele has aimed to strip back the sets to ensure the audience is pulled into the drama.

“From the beginning we’ve been examining how we can stage this in a way that feels gripping and exciting and interesting for audiences,” she says. “And so everything about what we’re doing with it becomes about the human aspect rather than making the ghost part of it the focus. 

“One of the key choices we made was to try and make our lens through Senta rather than through the Dutchman. This leans into that idea of it being through the human lens.”

The team have given Senta more agency than in some productions, where she is portrayed as a naïve village girl.

“We’re choosing to portray Senta as someone who is more mature and more autonomous,” Elin explains. “She understands what she’s getting into. The Dutchman may be charismatic, but he also offers her an escape from her everyday life, and I think that is as romantic a concept to her as falling desperately in love straight away.”

Both Jack and Elin grew up in Wales and have taken inspiration from their home country for the production.

“I lived in Pembrokeshire for a year and have spent a lot of time there since I was three,” says Jack.

“And with Elin growing up on Anglesey, I think we both had a pretty quick connection with the community in this opera, and what the reality of life in a remote coastal community could be like in a non-stereotype way.  

“Actually, there’s a lot about the coastline of Wales which speaks quite clearly to this work. Wagner had originally set the story in Scotland, and just before the premiere he moved it to Norway, so the story does feel like it could happen in Wales.”

And Elin says there’s a visionary element to this: “There’s something about the environment of these coastal towns that has this extreme romance to it. These are beautiful places in terms of the landscape and the horizons and the textures you get. WNO’s scenic and props department, who are based at Cardiff Theatrical Services, have really done an incredible job to encompass the romance, the beauty and the cosmic element of these landscapes alongside the kind of harsh reality of living there.”

For both Elin and Jack, one of the attractions of being involved in the production was the chance to work with Welsh National Opera.

Elin moved to Cardiff to study Design for Performance at Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama and has since worked with a host of companies, including Theatr Cymru, Scottish Ballet, New English Ballet Theatre, Matthew Bourne’s New Adventures and Cardiff’s Sherman Theatre.

“WNO would tour to Llandudno when I was little,” she recalls, “and that was really my first introduction to opera. It feels really exciting to be working in the Wales Millennium Centre and with everyone at the company. The expertise there is incredible. 

“Because I have worked more in the ballet world than the world of opera, I think I’m less driven by how things are ‘normally’ done. I’m used to being led by music, and Wagner’s music is so sweeping it does take you there emotionally. In stripping the design back, I hope that audiences are genuinely invested and interested in the characters’ journeys, and I hope people are moved by it.”

Jack, who is artistic director of Shadwell Opera and has worked with companies including Scottish Opera, Royal Opera House, London Handel Festival and the Royal Academy of Music, first discovered his love for opera seeing WNO performances while growing up in Cardiff.

“It means everything to me to be working with WNO. Welsh National Opera has been a part of my musical life for a really long time. I saw my first operas from when I was about 13. I assisted at WNO in 2016 on The Merchant Of Venice, but this is my first time directing a WNO production.”

This year marks the 80th anniversary of the founding of Welsh National Opera, and, Jack says, the company has been a powerhouse of the arts throughout those decades: “The Flying Dutchman is the perfect work for this anniversary. It’s a big chorus opera, and you’ve got this big symphony orchestra and the amazing scenic work of WNO’s technical teams and all the amazing expertise which goes into this show. I really hope that it gives people in all of the cities which this show goes to an impression of the excellence of WNO and the importance of the company as a creative force and public institution.”

Welsh National Opera perform The Flying Dutchman at Birmingham Hippodrome on Thursday 7 May alongside Blaze Of Glory (Friday the 8th) and family show Play Opera LIVE - Shipwrecked! on Saturday the 9th.