Romantic Opera in Three Acts.

First performed at the Royal Saxon Court Theatre, Dresden, Jan. 2, 1843.

Original Cast.

Conductor, Richard Wagner.

Riga and Cassel, 1843; Berlin, 1844; Zurich, 1852; Schwerin, Weimar, and Breslau, 1853; Frankfort and Wiesbaden, 1854; Hanover, Carlsruhe, and Prague, 1857; Mayence and Vienna, 1860; KÖnigsberg, 1861; Lucerne, 1862; Munich, 1864; Stuttgart, 1865; OlmÜtz, 1866; Rotterdam and Dessau, 1869; Hamburg, Darmstadt, Mannheim, Gratz, 1870; London (Italian), July 23, 1870; Vienna, Brunswick, and BrÜnn, 1871; Brussels and Stockholm, 1872; Budapesth, Stettin, Augsburg, Magdeburg, Sondershausen, and Baden, 1874; Strassburg, 1875; LÜbeck, Freiburg, and Salzburg, 1876; Philadelphia, 1876; Dublin and Bologna, 1877; WÜrzburg, 1877; New York, Jan. 26, 1877; Innspruck, 1880.

First performed in America as "Il Vascello Fantasma," in Philadelphia, Nov. 8, 1876, by the Pappenheim Company.

First performed in New York at the Academy of Music, Jan. 26, 1877, by the Kellogg English Opera Company.

Cast.

Conductor, S. Behrens.

First performed in New York in German at the Academy of Music, Mar. 12, 1877.

Cast.

Conductor, A. Neuendorff.

THE FLYING DUTCHMAN

“Der Fliegende HollÄnder” is the first of the works of Wagner which shadow forth the style, the system, and the mastery of lyrico-dramatic art found in his later works. All these elements of this master's art, however, are here found in an embryonic and experimental stage. Nothing is developed, and nothing is definite. Wagner himself did not realise the significance or possible extent of his movement. He was at this time wholly unconscious of the fact that he was laying the foundations of a new method of composition in musical drama. He was aiming only at writing an expressive score, in which the characters of his play, their emotions and their actions, should be drawn with all the powers of music.

The work was written at Meudon in the spring of 1841. All except the overture was completed in seven weeks. Of the fate of the first sketch of this lyric drama, of the hardships of the composer's life at the time of its execution, of the first performances, the reader has already been told. He has seen also how the stormy voyage to London impressed upon his mind the legend of the "Flying Dutchman" with which he had already made acquaintance. It now becomes our duty to examine the sources from which Wagner derived the poetic materials of this play and to ascertain how he treated them. In the "Flying Dutchman" the poetic ability of the master was first exhibited. He ceased to be a mere libretto-writer and became a dramatic poet. His version of the famous old legend is a lovely one, and much of its increased beauty is the product of his own genius. It was, as he himself said in the oft-quoted "Communication," the "first folk-poem that forced its way into my heart, and called on me as man and artist to point its meaning, and mould it in a work of art."

It was while in Riga that he made his first acquaintance with the story. "Heine takes occasion to relate it," he says, "in speaking of the representation of a play founded thereon, which he had witnessed—as I believe—at Amsterdam. This subject fascinated me, and made an indelible impression upon my fancy; still it did not as yet acquire the force needful for its rebirth within me." The story of Heine was in "The Memoirs of Herr Schnabelewopski." It is not certain whose play it was that Heine meant. Francis Hueffer, in his "Richard Wagner,"[33] expresses the belief that the play was that of Fitzball, which was running at the Adelphi Theatre in 1827, when Heine visited London. Mr. Hueffer bases his argument largely on the fact that two features of Fitzball's play, both additions to the old legend, are mentioned by Heine as appearing in the drama which he saw. These are the pictures of the Dutchman on the wall of Daland's house, and the taking of a wife by the wandering seaman.

Mr. Hueffer adds:

It should be noted that Mr. W. Ashton Ellis, whose translation of Wagner's prose works has been so often quoted, wrote a paper to disprove the theory of Mr. Hueffer as to the play having been Fitzball's. The matter, after all, is not one of great importance. Wagner got his materials from Heine's book, which contained a version of a very old legend, and in making the text of his lyric drama, he altered and improved that material as Mr. Hueffer has indicated.

The late Mr. John P. Jackson, formerly musical editor of The New York World, in the admirable introduction to his translation of the text of this opera, at one time used at the Metropolitan Opera House, says that the Fitzball play was founded on a version of the legend printed in Blackwood's Magazine in May, 1821. That version runs thus:

This is practically the original story of the "Flying Dutchman." It is no new tale, but, like nearly all myths, a development. In the literature of Greece we find the wanderer in the person of Ulysses, yearning for hearth and home and the joys of domestic love. In the early period of Christianity the myth entered and gave us the gloomy figure of the Wandering Jew, accursed and hopeless of all save the end in oblivion. With the Dutch the legend in the Middle Ages was easily transferred to their own favourite element, the sea, whereon at that time they were among the most daring and skilful. The struggle of the Dutchman against contending winds and waves typified their own battles with the powers of Old Ocean, and their determination to conquer at all hazards.

Later writers than those of the dark ages endeavoured to give this legend an end. In its original form it stands suspended with the Dutchman a creature without hope. Captain Marryatt, in his "Phantom Ship," releases the wanderer from his ceaseless journeyings by means of an amulet, or religious charm. Sir Walter Scott's version of the tale—wherever he found it—is a curiously poor one. According to him, the vessel was laden with precious metal. A murder was committed on board, and as a punishment for it a plague fell upon the crew. No port would permit the ship to enter, and it was doomed to float about aimlessly forever. There is no poetry and a total absence of the personal tragedy in that version. The idea of the salvation of the wanderer through the self-sacrificing love of woman, an idea to be found in literatures much older than this, was introduced into the story before Heine saw the play of which he wrote. It is quite possible that Heine never saw such a play, yet the fact remains that in the Fitzball drama the Dutchman did take a wife, only, however, to make an offering of her to a sea monster—a grotesque and utterly unpoetical idea.

Wagner got his beautiful ending from Heine. Mr. Hueffer has taken the trouble to retail the story as told in "The Memoirs of Herr von Schnabelewopski." The sentence of Van der Decken is that he shall wander till doomsday unless he shall be released by a woman faithful until death. The Devil does not believe in the existence of women of that sort, and therefore allows the wanderer to go ashore once every seven years to see if he can find such a one. (How was it that the Devil was so often mistaken about women?) He meets with failure after failure, till finally he falls in with a Scotch merchant, whose daughter has already learned his story and formed a romantic attachment for him. She has his picture in her room, and when her father, having accepted the Dutchman's offer for her hand, brings him home, she at once recognises him and determines to sacrifice herself to save him. Just at this point Herr von Schnabelewopski is called away for a short time, and when he returns he sees the Dutchman about to sail away without his wife. He loves her and would save her from his fate. But she, true to her vow, ascends a high rock, whence she throws herself into the sea. The spell is broken and the united lovers enter eternal rest. The reader will now see that it was the void occasioned by the temporary absence of von Schnabelewopski which Wagner filled with the interview between Senta and Erik. Except for the introduction of this character, a tenor, necessary to afford both dramatic and musical contrast to the story, Wagner has followed Heine closely, as lovers of the dramatist's works will at once perceive.

Out of this material Wagner constructed a drama which at the time of its production was as novel as "Tristan und Isolde" was in later years. In it we first meet with this master's remarkable power of concentrating in each scene the emotional moods and pouring them out to us in the music, while in those portions of the score devoted to musical description, such as the sea music and the sailors' choruses, we may note his ability to make dramatic atmosphere. How these powers reveal themselves to us in the grand duo of the last scene of Siegfried and the Waldweben! It is worth while hearing "Der Fliegende HollÄnder" occasionally, if only to study the embryonic Wagner. Now let us see how Wagner himself regarded the subject-matter of his story.

"The figure of the Flying Dutchman," he says, "is a mythical creation of the folk. A primal trait of human nature speaks out from it with a heart-enthralling force. This trait, in its most universal meaning, is the longing after rest from amid the storms of life." He traces the older forms of the legend as seen in the stories of Ulysses and the Wandering Jew, and then says:

With this broad, poetic view of his subject-matter Wagner set out to write a text book which should be a real drama and not a mere libretto. "From here," he says, "begins my career as poet, and my farewell to the mere concoctor of opera texts." In this drama are embodied the fundamental ideas of the entire Wagnerian system. Here they appear to us in their first stage of development, incomplete, unformed, and scarcely recognised by their own creator. The value of the mythologic matter, however, already forced itself upon the mind, and the conviction of its suitability to musical embodiment, because freed from hampering accessories, came to him at this period of his career. I have already quoted his words as to the employment of myths as subjects for music dramas. I may be pardoned for quoting here a passage from my introductory essay in the Schirmer vocal score of the drama:

In the structure of this drama the reader will find that Wagner did not abandon the old operatic forms. He employed duets, solos, choruses, etc., as an opera composer would. He did not use the leitmotiv system, but only hit upon its fundamental idea. He did not use the staff-rhyme. In fact we find in this work only a perfectly sincere attempt to make a good play and to express its feelings in music. He says himself of this work:

In the "Autobiographic Sketch" he tells us how, after disposing of the first sketch to Pillet, he set to work to compose his own music.

This statement affords sufficient evidence that nothing revolutionary was in Wagner's mind when he sat down to compose "Der Fliegende HollÄnder." No vision of the polyphonic web of "Tristan und Isolde" rose in his brain; no conception of an operatic score in which every melodic idea should have a direct message. He began with two purely lyric numbers, and it was not till he reached the ballad of Senta in the second act that the first principles of the leitmotiv system dawned upon him, and then only in such shape as they had occurred to others before him. The ballad as a whole is a purely lyric number, written in a plain song form; but in it occur the two principal typical themes of the drama. The first is that designed to represent the Dutchman as a wanderer without rest:

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The second theme, a broad, flowing, tender melody, is designed to typify the redeeming principle, the self-sacrificing love of the woman.

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In the "Communication to My Friends" he says:

One other musical thought in this work must here be enumerated because of a special meaning which it had for its composer. In 1866 Ferdinand Praeger was dining with Wagner in Munich, when the conversation turned upon "the weary mariner, his yearning for land and love, and Wagner's own longing for his fatherland at the time he composed the 'Dutchman.'" Wagner went to the piano, and said, "The pent-up anguish, the homesickness that then held possession of me, were poured out in this phrase":

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"At the end of the phrase," continued Wagner, "on the diminished seventh, in my mind I brooded over the past, the repetitions, each higher, interpreting the increased intensity of my sufferings."

The "Flying Dutchman," then, is the product of Wagner's genius in its embryonic stage. The grasp of tradition and operatic convention upon his mind is not yet shaken off. The chorus of sailors in the first finale is in a popular, rhythmical, melodic vein and might almost have been written by a Frenchman. The opening of Act II. is constructed on wholly operatic lines, with its gay chorus followed by the dramatic ballad. Then follow two purely operatic scenes, the duets of Senta and Erik and Senta and the Dutchman. In the last act the paucity of material forced Wagner to spin his web very thin indeed. He consumes as much time as possible with his theatrically contrasting choruses of merry-making betrothal guests and ghostly wanderers of the sea. The machinery of the stage creaks through the whole scene till the entrance of Senta and Erik brings us once more face to face with human nature. The scene is brief, and it is not to be praised. It would have been more beautiful to make the Dutchman depart out of sheer love for Senta and unwillingness to win salvation through her sacrifice. But the act ends effectively. Perhaps the most striking proof in all this curious score that Wagner had not yet found himself is in the duet of Daland and the Dutchman in Act I. The Dutchman asks if Daland has a daughter and on receiving an affirmative reply, says, "Let her be my wife." Daland, "joyful yet perplexed," exclaims:

And with this Wagner ushers in a very Italian duet:

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On the other hand, there are not a few manifestations in "Der Fliegende HollÄnder" of the future Wagner. In the first place, the overture is a splendid exemplification of his musical style and his method of construction and it employs some of the materials of the opera in a masterly manner. Again the solo of the steersman, succeeded by the outburst of the storm and the appearance of the Dutchman's ship upon the raging deep, produces an effect similar to that of the song of the sailor followed by the passionate utterances of Isolde in the first scene of "Tristan und Isolde." The solo of the Dutchman in Act I., while more conventional in its melodic manner than Wagner's later music, gives a foretaste of the power exhibited in the second act of "Lohengrin" in expressing dark and bitter moods. In the musical and dramatic characterisation of Daland one may discern something of the facility which afterward made so much of Hans Sachs. Indeed in characterisation more than in anything else does this opera herald the coming master, for Van der Decken, Senta and Daland are clearly and completely drawn musically and dramatically. They are living figures in the gallery of Wagner portraits; and while we may not deny that "Der Fliegende HollÄnder" is a comparatively weak production, we would not readily part with the dreamful, devoted, ill-fated Senta.

In the instrumentation, also, one finds evidences of the real Wagner. The high, shrieking brass chords of the diminished seventh, heard in the "Rienzi" overture, are here repeated; the rich use of divided strings is found; and the beautiful employment of wide harmonies in the wood wind leads the mind forward toward the final exit of Elizabeth in "TannhÄuser" and the entrance of Elsa in "Lohengrin." But, view this work as we may, we cannot regard it as standing beside the two lyric dramas of the transition period. It is the work of an independent and gifted mind of 28, a work of radiant promise, but not of mature genius.