From the magazine

Opera North’s Flying Dutchman scores a full house in cliché bingo

Plus: the UK première of Kaija Saariaho's final work

Richard Bratby
In Opera North's Dutchman, Daland’s crew were salarymen in lanyards and the storm they’d just weathered was the latest bureaucratic omnishambles.  IMAGE: JAMES GLOSSOP
EXPLORE THE ISSUE 08 February 2025
issue 08 February 2025

The overture to The Flying Dutchman opens at gale force. There’s nothing like it; Mendelssohn and Berlioz both painted orchestral seascapes but no one before Wagner had flung open the sluices and let the ocean roar into the opera house with quite such elemental power. Garry Walker and the orchestra of Opera North dived into it headfirst, while images of waves were projected on the curtain.

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