My first Wagner opera; I gather the Dutchman is entry-level stuff. At the interval the woman in the next seat turned to me and commented on how bonkers a production this was. (She was a Wagner regular.) My word would have been “incoherent”.

In this production Opera North adds the parallel stories of the lives of refugees in Leeds, who – like the Dutchman – were fleeing and doomed to roam until they could be saved. That adds relevance and empathy – but it ends up confusing. Daland’s ship is the Home Office, staffed by besuited bureaucrats; the metaphor is the ship of state, but that sinks beneath the waves as Wagner’s plot develops. The characters of Erik and the Steuermann are conflated, which means that one man is simultaneously at the helm of the ship and looking after Daland’s daughter on land. As for Senta – well, she was Wagner’s creation and he wrote the libretto, but even by opera standards she’s flaky.

The set design was occasionally fussy and off-putting: things appeared without clear reasons. The costumes were distractingly ugly: even with wearying ages at sea, why was the Dutchman dressed as a bag lady? The mirroring of clothes and movement between the Dutchman and Senta was clever – but what did it add? Ditto Senta as a Christ-like figure as she crawls around the table pouring wine.

Carping over. Maybe I need to do some reading. The music was wonderful and the singing excellent – although my neighbour and I commented on the Dutchman’s excessive vibrato.