Last year's performances of Wagner's final opera, Parsifal, were hailed as 'a staging that is as good as any Wagner seen in London in the last 20 years' (The Guardian). Now ENO presents his earliest masterpiece, The Flying Dutchman, in a new production by Jonathan Kent, formerly at London?s cutting-edge Almeida Theatre and now a successful opera director in demand from Santa Fe to St Petersburg.

Edward Gardner, ENO's Olivier Award-winning Music Director, conducts his first Wagner opera. American bass James Creswell (Timur in 2009?s Turandot) stars as the legendary ship?s captain fated to sail the seas for ever, with Orla Boylan ? a 'radiant' (Independent on Sunday) Sieglinde in 2004's The Valkyrie ? as Senta, the girl sent to save him.