Guest Blog: 'My Journey Has Been Almost as Long as His!': Writer and Librettist Glyn Maxwell on Adapting Wagner's THE FLYING DUTCHMAN

My journey with The Flying Dutchman has been almost as long as his. I was enthralled by the story as a child – a sailor who lost a bet with the Devil! – and then, twenty-five years ago, wrote a 10,000 line epic poem called Time’s Fool, where I substituted an endless ghost train for the cursed ship. This poem is now a script in the hands of Hollywood, another kind of journey without end…

When OperaUpClose came calling I had a sweet sense of fate. Just after that, Covid-19 came calling too, which at least meant I had time to get to know the Wagner terribly well. Lockdown was also good method-writing for experiencing silence, solitude, existential doubt, and being without a port for who could tell how long?

My process with adapting opera combines awe – both at the music and at any story that has proved itself immortal – with an obligation towards the turning of the world since the original was written. Our approach was always going to be the telling of a tale of England Now. The only stage direction at the beginning is ‘Here. Soon.’ – though a cursory glance at current Home Office policy might suggest that ‘Soon’ has arrived. A monstrous wave to capsize small boats full of women and children feels like something I might have considered for the plot yet discarded for being too implausibly cruel. The 27 souls who perished in November 2021 – as the French and English squabbled over who was supposed to save them – were sailing their useless dinghy from a town called Dunkerque. Ring any bells?

This Dutchman is, like Wagner’s, the tale of a lost soul, but it’s also the tale of a nation fortified against pity and mercy, a tale of propaganda victorious, the minds of the lucky shut down by technology, the world’s forlorn cast adrift and seeking shelter.

The gift that OperaUpClose brings to a librettist or adapting composer is the electrifying force of storytelling with a necessarily stripped-back aesthetic, which demands a refocusing of characters, choruses, instruments. Early in the process I decided that my Mariner would be a corrupted creature of the world we know – though he doesn’t know it. Our world has driven him mad, he has voices in his head, but, in a dreadful inversion of that familiar pathology, the voices in his head are not only real people, but desperate real people in the hold of his stricken boat. He is to blame for that, but they are to blame for nothing.

I decided to break the family tie between the Captain (Wagner’s Daaland) and the young woman Starlight (Wagner’s Senta), and to put aside the supernatural elements. I felt that aspects of my country now were frightening enough without ghosts or curses or fathers selling their daughters. My Captain just wants to take the money and retire. Starlight is the last idealist left looking out to sea, among spotters working for the Border Police. But the man she dreams of is not the man who comes ashore, and the only ‘undying love’ in our story is the love that pulls drowning strangers from the water.

In practical terms, the touring protocol demands a bright, clear, resonant central concept, something flexible and fun to play with as we journey through port cities. The ghostly choruses of the lost were recorded in those cities – we who you dream of are no dream – and in this way, we hope, we light our own ring of Coronation coastal lanterns.

The Flying Dutchman from OperaUpClose opens at Turner Sims Southampton on 28 June. The production will then tour the UK calling at SS Great Britain Bristol (4-5 July), Worthing Pavilion (7-8 July), Grand Junction London (12-14 July), Trinity Market Hull (18-19 July) and Invisible Wind Factory Liverpool (22 - 23 July).

 

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