Wagner was a masterly self-mythologizer, and many of the stories he told about his life and works wither under close scrutiny. Scholars are skeptical of the composer's claim that he conceived of The Flying Dutchman, his opera about a vaguely vampiric mariner cursed to wander the sea, in the course of a stormy voyage across the Baltic Sea. Nonetheless, he did take such a voyage, and his ship did find refuge for a few days in the coastal Norwegian town of Sandvika, the same place where The Flying Dutchman begins. Wagner's evocation of the storm in the Dutchman overture is vivid enough that one can almost taste the salt in the air: horns and trombones hurl forth a driving, heaving primary motif while strings swirl furiously beneath them.
Albert Pinkham Ryder, "Flying Dutchman," 1887
The opera begins on board a Norwegian ship belonging to a local captain, Daland. A Steersman keeping watch falls asleep, at which point the ghost ship with blood-red sails crashes in. The Dutchman sings a monologue, "Die Frist ist um" ("The time is up"), relating his cursed existence. Once, on a stormy voyage around the Cape of Good Hope, the unlucky mariner swore that he would give up his soul if he could complete the journey. Now, he wanders eternally, coming ashore every seven years in search of the woman who will sacrifice herself to save him. Daland converses with this pale, black-clad arrival and warms to him on learning of his accumulated treasure. In short order it is arranged that the Dutchman will marry Daland's daughter Senta. We meet her in the second act, which begins with the woman of the village busy at their spinning wheels. Senta sings her own ballad of the Dutchman; she has fallen in love with his portrait, which hangs on the wall. Erik, a young man smitten with her, tries to divert her attention. Then the Dutchman enters, the portrait come to life, and vows are exchanged. In the third act, after contrapuntal carousing by sailors human and undead, the Dutchman overhears Erik pleading once more his love for Senta, and concludes that he still has not found the woman he seeks. He summons his spectral crew, discloses his identity, and speeds away. As the ship leaves port, Senta finally makes the redemptive sacrifice, throwing herself into the sea. At the close, according to Wagner's libretto, the transfigured forms of Senta and the Dutchman rise toward heaven.
From The Great Operas by J. Cuthbert Hadden.
Wagner first sketched his story in 1840, in Paris, and completed the work the following year. The plot is based largely on Heinrich Heine's 1834 tale "From the Memoirs of Herr von Schnabelewopski," an ironic version of the phantom-mariner legend. Wagner dispenses with the irony and converts the material into a supernatural operatic thriller, incorporating elements from Heinrich Marschner's popular opera Der Vampyr. Wagner was able to combine these ingredients with memories of his own nautical adventure of 1839. The project undoubtedly benefited also from the composer's lifelong identification with the figure of the wanderer or restless seeker, who appears in one form or another in all his subsequent work. In one way, however, Dutchman stands apart from the remainder of the Wagner oeuvre: it is a work of exceptional concision, consisting of around two hours twenty minutes of music — a miniature next to the vast expanse of Tristan or Meistersinger. Wagner had hoped that the opera would find success on the stage of the Paris Opéra, but in the event it had its première in Dresden, in early 1843, after the composer had taken up his post as Kapellmeister.
The beginning of the Dutchman's monologue "Die Frist ist um."
The score is anchored on its two vocal set pieces, the Dutchman's "Die Frist is um" and Senta's Ballad. The first comes in the wake of a solo by the Steersman, whose efforts at hearty song are undermined by ghostly tremors. The vivid contrast between the bland daily existence of the Norwegian sailors and the nocturnal realm of the wanderer sets forth in musical terms a duality that so often governs Wagner's world-view. The monologue begins in an atmosphere of menacing stillness, with violas and cellos prowling over a fixed and ambiguous bass-note of E-sharp. As at the beginning of Tristan, we are in harmonic limbo, with no clear key center established. From the tense stasis a rapid-moving C-minor passage soon emerges, its headlong energy smacking of Beethoven. Such a large-scale vocal scene was hardly unusual in opera of the period, but the brutal cumulative energy of Wagner's creation is something rather new. The part of the Dutchman is written for a voice type now described as bass-baritone — a hybrid that would reappear in the part of Wotan in the Ring. The singer must bring a dark bass color to the opening section as well as ringing high Es and Fs at the climax: "You worlds, end your course / Eternal annihilation, take me!" Here Simon Estes sings in Harry Kupfer's 1978–85 production at Bayreuth:
Senta's Ballad, too, sprawls beyond the dimensions of the conventional aria or vocal scene. It begins with the heroine singing "Johohoe" to the tune of the rugged rising figure that is heard at the beginning of the overture — an incipient leitmotif that symbolizes the Dutchman's curse. The three strophes of the ballad follow a repeating structure: first a stately, archaic recitation; then a stormy middle section, with exclamations of "Johohoe!"; and then a lyrical countermelody representing the hope for redemption. The girls of the spinning chorus join at the end of the second strophe. The final strophe is intensified at every turn, with heavier orchestration, a slowing of tempo, and a brilliant grand-opera finish in which Senta declares her intention to achieve the Dutchman's redemption herself. Here the great soprano Astrid Varnay sings at Bayreuth in 1955:
From Joseph Keilberth's 1955 Dutchman at Bayreuth (Pristine).
The tour-de-force of the third act belongs to the chorus, which is divided into three groups: the male Norwegian sailors, young women of the village, and the Dutchman's crew. The scene begins with a lusty, stamping drinking-song ("Steersman! Leave your watch!"), which demonstrates Wagner's flair for populist tune-spinning: it has the sound of something transcribed from life rather than composed fresh for the occasion. The sailors' attempts to rouse the interest of their spectral counterparts at first meets with silence, and the women become uneasy with this foolhardy effort to awaken the uncanny other. After a second chest-thumping rendition of the drinking-song, the dead crew stirs to life with a violently raging chorus, pinned on the same "Johojoe!" motif that Senta sang at the beginning of the ballad. The Norwegians make a futile attempt to resume their song, are overwhelmed by the satanic roar, and flee in terror. Wagner's favorite contrast of "day" and "night" worlds is underscored to maximum effect. Here is the scene as filmed in 1964 by the great East German director Joachim Herz, a pioneer of postwar Regietheater approaches to Wagner:
