White-Knuckled Wagner: Tash Siddiqui enjoys the ride at the Coliseum

Review of The Flying Dutchman, directed Kent, conducted Gardner, English National Opera, London, 2012.

November 2012, Volume 6, Number 3, 80–83.

It is bedtime, and Senta, a pretty little girl, neglected and perhaps even abused by her creepy father Daland, sits on her bed in her pyjamas and girly pink wellies. Her father enters and tucks her up in a pink duvet. He is dressed in rough oilskins, so we presume he is some kind of seafarer. He gives the girl a story-book with the brooding romantic face of the Dutchman on the cover. Later, watched by his small daughter, this unlovable and unloving father offers to sell his child to the gloomy Dutchman. Daland’s reward is a bunch of jewels dumped on the infant’s mattress, as though we were witnessing the seedy transactions of a child prostitution ring.