Faithful until death, Senta swears to her Flying Dutchman, but was he ever really listening, even when she proves it with the ultimate sacrifice? Not if he was just her hopeless phantom - and she his.

The point couldn't be made more clearly at the climax to the Royal Opera's latest new production. It was brave, though hardly unprecedented, for the director Tim Albery and conductor Marc Albrecht to opt for the later, one-act version of Wagner's tricksy pyschodrama, but they've sprung an additional surprise. No redemption, not even after death, for this miserable couple: Anja Kampe's Senta dropped to the ground, clutching the graceful model ship that Bryn Terfel's grungey Dutchman was never likely to have piloted; the music, meanwhile, simply thudded to a sombre D Major halt, since Albrecht has grafted on Wagner's original final bars rather than the composer's more optimistic rewrite.

Whether that delivered the KO blow or the icing on the cake for Albery's staging will depend on your appetite for Gothic Romanticism: put simply, Albery isn't having any of it. So when Terfel's Dutchman simply stumbles wearily on to the metal shell that passes for both sea and land (sets by Michael Levine), what we see is no glamorous spectre cursed to wander the seas but simple damaged goods, the counterpart to Kampe's bedraggled seamstress. When the fantasy does come, it's imagined: in one of the show's few theatrical tricks - though it is genuinely terrifying - the chavvish sailors' common room is suddenly invaded by a host of Dutchmen- doppelgängers out to pounce on their women. Senta's dream? The sailors' nightmare? Probably both.

It's only when the performers can't quite push their personalities through Albery's grim reality that modern-dress banality intrudes . Torsten Kerl's patchily-sung Erik, blond mullet and all, is given few favours by having to sing his duet with Senta in what looks like a Primark sweatshop. Surprisingly, Terfel sometimes seems physically ill at ease, going for Bela Lugosi-style bulging eyes and lurching when everything around him suggests he is simply a man with guilt that he can't shift.

That shouldn't detract from his stunning musical achievement, however. Wagner singing is hardly ever this nuanced, but Terfel's bass-baritone is now so subtly controlled that he can fire it out over the orchestra or thin it down to a plaintive whisper. Kampe is almost as good, singing with all the frenzied ardour to lay bare her character's misplaced longing. John Tessier is an affecting Steersman and Hans-Peter König an unusually sympathetic Daland. The Royal Opera chorus are on terrific form, too.

But perhaps the strongest argument in favour of this unsentimental night at the opera comes from the pit, where Marc Albrecht powers through the score in thrilling fashion. That he surely breaks the Wagner land speed record in a pulverising overture is impressive enough, but the rest is as high-voltage and unremittingly tense, and the orchestra play with more than enough sparkto light up the fog.

Box office: 020-7304 4000, to Mar 10

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