The opera novice: The Flying Dutchman by Richard Wagner At some point we've all fallen in love with a fictional character, whether it's Mr Rochester, Emma Woodhouse or, like one friend of mine, Frodo from Lord of the Rings. But although you might fantasise that the character will one day arrive out of the blue and whisk you away, how would you react if your father actually brought him home and suggested marriage? This is what happens to Senta, the heroine of Wagner's The Flying Dutchman (1843). For years she has read about the sailor cursed by Satan to wander the seas on a ghostly ship. Only the love of a faithful woman can redeem him and Senta, day-dreaming at work, imagines she will be that woman: "Yet there could be redemption one day for that pale man if he found a wife on earth who'd be true to him till death!" I never quite worked out what this redemption actually entails: will the faithful woman release him from the curse thus allowing him to die? If so bad luck on Senta who either way has fallen for a ghost. The Dutchman was not the composer's first opera, but as I learnt from Michael Tanner's excellent book, Wagner, it was the one that properly began his career. I was impressed by last year's Royal Opera House production - especially its amazing ship set and strong singing. Jonathan Kent's new production for English National Opera, which opened on Saturday, is a less traditional interpretation - though the same concept has apparently been used several times before on the continent. Wagner's libretto dictates that Senta does not appear until the second act; here, though, the opera opens with her as a little girl lying in bed reading nautical adventure stories while ghostly waves are projected round her. She's on stage for the whole first act watching the Flying Dutchman's ship plough into the one captained by her father. Rather creepily, the Dutchman - dressed like a young Richard Wagner, I thought - emerges from her bed. The implication of this Freudian family romance is that the story is Senta's imaginary wish-fulfilment. At two and a half hours this is one of Wagner's shortest works; but since it is played without an interval, it actually requires a long period of sustained concentration. I have to admit I found the Dutchman's moody complaints a bit wearisome and - like many others - think Senta is at the opera's emotional heart. In his most recent novel, The Stranger's Child, Wagnerophile Alan Hollinghurst has a teenage girl called Daphne listen in rapture to Nellie Melba sing the famous day-dreaming ballad. She was gripped by the girl's eerie calls, Jo-ho-he, Jo-ho-he, which had a clear warning of tragedy to them; but at the same time she had a delicious sense of having nothing whatever to worry about. As well as writing brilliantly about the music, Hollinghurst uses Senta as a model for Daphne, who we first meet reading poetry, and who falls in love with an Edwardian poet who is killed in the First World War and subsequently turns into a legend. As Rupert Christiansen later pointed out to me, the Dutchman is a forerunner of Tristan, which I wrote about a few weeks ago. In both operas two fantasists blindly sacrifice themselves for love. This production tried to make clear - in some instances a bit too clear - why Senta would want to escape her world. Instead of listening with full attention to Senta's ballad (as they did at Covent Garden) the factory girls mock her obsession: "Where is the maid whom God's angel once predicted?" they sing, flapping their arms in imitation of the angel. Oddly the chorus still sang this line with the plangent beauty Wagner intended: the production wasn't brave enough to carry the mockery in their voices. In a later overblown scene, sailors dressed as fancy-dress pirates and skeletons humiliate the girl, and even try to rape her. Yet no matter how much one sympathises with Senta, in Orla Boylan's performance she comes across as the kind of woman who might as easily fall in love with a serial killer. A thought should be spared for Senta's earthly lover Erik, excellently played by Stuart Skelton. I have a soft spot for the bourgeois characters in Wagner who are baffled by the intense and irresponsible lovers around them. He's a bit like Tristan's King Marke in this respect. Poor old Erik climbed dangerous mountain paths to pluck flowers for his sweetheart, and now she wants to run off with a man who's using her to lift a Satanic curse (the old story). Their duet has more emotional impact than anything the Dutchman and Senta ever sing to one another. When he came to Tristan, Wagner solved this conundrum by combining the mystical union of souls with a romance based on shared memories. Musically this is unmistakably Wagner with a dramatic overture evoking both a sea storm and stormy emotions. Each main character has a leitmotif - Senta's is especially beautiful - but to my ear they aren't played around with to the extent they are in the later works. Unknowingly, I leapt in at the deep end with Wagner, seeing Parsifal and Tristan. The Flying Dutchman is a bit easier to get to grips with for the newcomer: I went along with two Telegraph colleagues - both novices - and they absolutely loved it. One couldn't take her eyes off the stage. Yet this is much more than an apprentice work: it's a fully achieved work of art with some of Wagner's most memorable music. Read how Sameer got into opera Can a non-Christian appreciate the St Matthew Passion? 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