The Flying Duchen

Let's get to the heart of this right away. How can we "do" Romanticism in an age of cynical post-modern irony? I don't pretend to have the answer, but the question is a hefty one. And Jonathan Kent's new production of The Flying Dutchman at ENO asks it full on. That is not the least reason it is so effective. Whether or not the director intended to do so, he's sunk his teeth into one of the big artistic conundrums of today. It deserves to be brought into the open.

We see Senta first as a child in pink pyjamas, watching the waves through a giant skylight; she craves her father's affection, but he is unable to deliver any and pushes off to sea, leaving her with a book of fairy tales for company. The Dutchman manifests as her imagining, her interior living, if you like, of such a fairy tale - as children do, as we all do if only we remember, casting her father one of its characters, and the Steersman too - who sings his quiet song with rapt nostalgia and falls asleep on the floor, where little Senta covers him tenderly with her duvet. The Dutchman and his ship arrive in a terrific coup-de-theatre, he in full Mr Darcy getup, while the ship wouldn't disgrace Errol Flynn's in The Sea Hawk. And Daland's eagerness to marry the stranger off to his daughter without noticing that said stranger is one of the Undead is all too convincing, because Daland is a stranger to love and values nothing but money.

Senta, meanwhile, grows up to be Orla Boylan - except that she doesn't. She's still living that fairy tale, her emotional world twisted into an alternative reality by the lack of emotional substance around her. She works in a factory making ships in bottles - the set (designed by Paul Brown) is magnificent, with a vast window and plenty of wood suggesting past glories for this Norwegian one-ghost suburb. Her refuge is the image of the Dutchman: her own longing, her own clinging to belief in the redemptive power of love and compassion. There's none of that in her real world. Even Erik (sung by Stuart Skelton, who is an absolute knockout of a Heldentenor) is no answer. He's a security guard at the factory and there's a hint of violence, born of frustration, in his treatment of her; this big guy doesn't know his own strength. And the other girls pick on her: she's the mildly deranged fat lump in the pink dress (Primark?) who pooh-poohs their sluttishness.

And then the boys come back from sea, they have a piss-up in the factory and they try to gang-rape her. In the song to the Steersman they're egging him on, as their leader, to do the deed. Remember that nostalgic first song he had in act 1? Everything now is inside-out and upside-down. The ghost ship chorus - beamed in by amplification from somewhere offstage (a bit of a pity soundwise) comes to Senta's aid and scares everyone off, but the event pushes her over the edge and, exhausted and already dead within, she breaks a beer bottle and stabs herself with it. She is destroyed by the society in which she lives. Jonathan Kent shows us the death of a soul.

The performances match the power of the staging. The chorus, for a start, is possibly the best I've ever heard at ENO. Orla Boylan's Senta gives everything in her Ballade; there may be issues about pacing and stamina, as in the scene with Erik she began to sound strained and tired, but she summoned reserves of strength for the final scene that made her Senta seem cousin not so much to Isolde (as Wagner later saw her, rewriting the ending post-Tristan - we got the early version at ENO) but Brunnhilde, facing a test of fire instead of water.

Clive Bayley is a magnificent and all too believable Daland; James Creswell as the Dutchman is strong and even-toned, though could maybe use more variety in vocal colour to put across the emotional content, rather than relying too heavily on diction - it's good to hear all the words, but it sometimes distorted the ends of his phrases. Tenor Robert Murray made much of the Steersman aria, which in the grand scheme of the staging acquired extra dramatic significance. But Skelton just about steals the show, despite his character having too little to do. He tweeted the other day that he was off to New York to sing in Die Walkure at very short notice (jumping in for Kaufmann). Lucky Met.

Still, there's big stuff happening at home, and it is happening most of all down the pit. This is Ed Gardner's first Wagner. And from the moment the lights go off and the orchestra plunges into the deep end, we plunge with them. They grab us by the throat and don't let us go for the full 135 minutes (no interval, thanks). The intensity is fabulous, both at the opera's wildest moments and its stillest; the pacing is excellent, passionate, convincing. This seemed the case after that glorious Rosenkavalier a few months back, but now there's no doubt about it: ENO is busy growing a great conductor.

So, I was wondering how we do romanticism in an anti-romantic age. And then I went to see a preview screening of the 3D film of Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake, which is being released into cinemas worldwide on 15 May starring Richard Winsor (and very good it is). And there's the prelude. The child prince in bed, in his pyjamas. His mother comes in; he reaches out to her, she backs away. He has a fuzzy swan by way of comforter. He has a nightmare vision of the real swan. And the action commences. Remind you of anything?

Now, I'm not suggesting for one moment that this Dutchman production borrows anything from anybody, but the general atmosphere and logic of the concept is quite prevalent enough for different directors to arrive at the same scenario from contrasting positions. The Flying Dutchman story has plenty in common with that of Swan Lake. The lead character's fantasy world becomes his/her reality, encroaches on actual reality, then destroys him/her.

And today, we can't take it on its own terms, the way Wagner or Tchaikovsky intended; we have to interpret and explain it, because it seems nobody will buy into it otherwise. If a twisted mind through lack of a parent's affection is becoming the dramatic cliche of today (taking over from child abuse, which has been used ad nauseam), there may be a good reason for it.

It's one of those odd things about Romanticism, though, that it involved plenty of cynicism. It was the composers, not the writers, whose senses of humour and awareness of irony sometimes fell flat. The Flying Dutchman is based on a story by Heinrich Heine, whose bite is much fiercer than his eloquent bark. In Heine, the ending of the tale - the suicide of "Mrs Flying Dutchman" - is cynical as hell: the only way a woman can be faithful to this man unto death, he suggests, is if she dies right away. Wagner makes a virtue out of this, but that's not how Heine wrote it. Just as Schumann, setting Heine's songs, avoids the razor edge of this poet's fearsome blade and refuses to laugh or sneer with him, so Wagner goes a stage further and creates his own philosophy out of it - perfumed, feverish and egotistical it may be, but it's alive and well and blazes out of the music. Heine, one suspects, would have been livid.

And Romanticism? Its music still has the strongest appeal to audiences for classical music - not all, of course, but a distinct majority. You want "popular classics"? You get Tchaikovsky. So it is not dead. Twisted, certainly, but defunct, not at all. Most of us still, somewhere, believe in the redemptive power of love - don't we? - and the current craze for vampire movies suggests that maybe we even want to believe, at some level, in the supernatural. But the destruction of a soul through lack of love, and that lack of love, and tenderness, and compassion, and kindness, and idealism, as a comment on our society, is taking hold. Maybe we should take notice.

Kathleen Ferrier - and the Kathleen Ferrier Award

That article about Kathleen Ferrier I promised you is out now in The Independent's all-new Saturday arts section, which launches today. You can read it online, naturally - here - but please buy a copy and see the goodies that the editorial team has been cooking up for us!

Meanwhile, last night at the Wigmore Hall, the Kathleen Ferrier Awards for young singers held its final. Winner: 25-year-old Welsh soprano Natalya Romaniw, who also scooped the Song Prize. Natalya has been in the public eye a fair bit already, popping up last year in the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World competition and featuring in a lovely documentary about Chopin fronted by James Rhodes. Her name may not sound so Welsh; apparently her Ukrainian grandfather settled in Wales during World War II. She studied at Guildhall and is currently an associate artist with the Classical Opera Company, which seems to have a canny way of spotting and grabbing the best young talent. Sophie Bevan, Sarah Jane Brandon and Pumeza Matshikiza have also graced its artist list in the recent past.

Second prize went jointly to soprano Ruth Jenkins (also 25) and baritone Ben McAteer (24). The pianist Craig White won the Accompanist's Prize. The full line-up of the finals is on the contest's website.

Natalya won second prize in the Houston Grand Opera's Eleanor McCollum Competition earlier this year, and although there's no video from last night's Ferrier final, there is a sample from Houston: 'Comè scoglio' from Così fan tutte, no small order for any soprano at any time. Brava, Natalya! We look forward to loving your voice for many happy years.

Encore!

Sad news from Paris this morning that Kurt Masur fell off his podium last night while conducting the third movement of Tchaikovsky's Symphony No.6. He has been taken to hospital. The concert was being broadcast live, but had to be abandoned. Apparently Sarkozy has sent him good wishes.

At Masur's age (84) few of us are lucky enough still to be able to work at all (the French president, of course, may be out of a job shortly, but that's by the by). Old soldiers never die, but conductors don't even retire. With such a vocation, why would anyone wish to stop? They may be getting younger...but they are also getting older. Besides Masur, Haitink, Davis and Maazel are all in their eighties now, and still going strong.

Nor is it only conductors for whom growing roses doesn't hold much appeal. Menahem Pressler, the irrepressible pianist formerly of the Beaux Arts Trio, seems to have gleaned a whole new lease of life as a soloist since the group folded and he's playing as wonderfully as ever, at 88. Last time I interviewed him he expressed astonishment that anyone should think he would want to give up something he loves so much in favour of playing golf. I'll never forget Horszowski's 99th birthday recital at the Wigmore Hall - except that that much-loved musician was probably 101 at the time, his birth certificate having been tampered with during his child prodigy days. Aldo Ciccolini, at 86, is releasing a new recording of Beethoven concertos. On the violin, Ida Haendel remains an extraordinary force. We do not seem certain how old she actually is. But it's the artistry that counts, not the age.

Occasionally, though - and for that same reason - you come across instances when perhaps clinging to concert life isn't doing the performer any favours. Nathan Milstein's final recital at the Royal Festival Hall (it must have been spring 1984) revealed a giant, but a fading one. And it is already several years since Masur conducted the Brahms 'German Requiem' in St Paul's Cathedral, which could have been a marvellous occasion but for the fact that he seemed shaky at best; one arm appeared to be causing him control problems.

The Italian violinist Gioconda de Vito, by contrast, stopped performing when she was only about 50. She told me, when I interviewed her for her 80th birthday, that she had reached the peak of her career and wanted to stop while she was ahead. She once attended a concert by Alfred Cortot late in the pianist's life, at which point he was long past his best; there, she made a mental note not to let herself reach that stage. And so she did not - even though she could assuredly have played and recorded for many more years.

Every case is different, and in the end it's for the musicians, rather than the audience, to know if or when to call time. Perhaps the wonderful thing is that they so rarely do. They, and we, can't get enough music. And that's how it ought to be. We wish Maestro Masur the fastest possible recovery and many rewarding years of music-making ahead.

As a special Friday Historical for the Immortal Musician, here is de Vito in the Beethoven Romance Op.50, which our friend "Otterhouse" has uploaded from a 78, with enhanced sound.

Breaking: Decca signs chocolate violinist

News just in: Decca has signed up the Greek violinist Leonidas Kavakos - on JDCMB long nicknamed "the chocolate violinist" (even though I am sure the luxury confectionary brand Leonidas is really nothing to do with him). It's a super choice: a mature, significant musician who has a style and sound of his own yet always puts musical integrity first.

Over the years I've loved every concert of his that I have attended - Tchaikovsky, Korngold and Stravinsky concerti among them, as well as startlingly wonderful Enescu and Schumann at the Wigmore Hall, countless delicacies in Verbier and a good few inspiring interviews. Kavakos has always struck me as one of those artists in whom all the synapses seem to work unimpeded: there's a direct flow from imagination to Strad to listener's ear. He's an unconventional player - he keeps his bowing elbow unusually relaxed, for one thing, and the sound is often gentle, refined, detailed. Inspirations, if I remember aright, include accounts and pictures of Joseph Joachim, plus the folk style of Kavakos's father's traditional Greek band. Also nice to see a major company signing an artist for substance ahead of photogenic concerns.

According to the press release, he'll be recording core repertoire: Beethoven sonatas, the Brahms concerto and the complete solo Bach.

Meet Janina Fialkowska

I'm off to meet a very remarkable woman this morning. Here she is, talking about the influence of Rubinstein, the infighting of the French school, the progress of her career and... how she has dealt with suffering cancer of the shoulder. It's a devastating but inspiring story, given her positive nature. She has recently been awarded the 2012 Governor General's Performing Arts Award for lifetime achievement in classical music - her native Canada's highest artistic honour - and there's a new CD on the way.

Above all, though, just listen to the way she plays Chopin. Intelligence and delineation is just the start of it: there's colour, freshness, joy and tremendous love.