THE FLYING DUTCHMAN
\V AGNER'S opera The Flying Dutchman is based on the legendary story of an arrogant sea-captain who boasted that his skill would steer him around the Cape of Good Hope in spite of Heaven itself, and who was doomed because of this blasphemy to sail the seas forever. Nothing can free him from the curse but @ true woman willing to give her own life for his salvation, and the devil permits him to go ashore once in seven years for the purpose of taking a wife on trial. A new LP recording of the opera by the "Chorus and Orchestra of the Bavarian State Opera under Clemens Krauss, with Hans Hotter in the role of the Dutchman and Viorica Ursuleac. as Senta, the woman he has been seeking, will be broadcast from all the YC stations at 7.0 p.m. on Sunday, June 27. Wagner wrote the libretto and score at Meudon, near Paris, in 1841, and it was first produced two years later at the Royal Saxon Court Theatre in Dresden. It was the first of his "music dramas" in which he began to break away from many of the stilted conventions of opera. It shows his ‘work in transition as he feels his way towards
the essential principles of his new art form. Wagner said himself that the music of Senta’s Ballad contained the thematic germs of the whole score, and he related the ideas of the. ballad to the cheerful — rollicking themes of the Nor-
wegian sailors, one of which he actually heard on the journey from Riga
to Engiand which is supposed to have inspired him to write the opera. The setting of the drama is the Norwegian coast in the 18th Century, where Daland, the captain of a Norwegian brig, sees the phantom ship of the Dutchman appear out of a storm, Daland offers to give him his daughter Senta as a wife in return for the treasure of "gold and pearls and. precious stones" with which the Dutchman’s" ship is loaded. Senta falls in love with the Dutchman, who mistrusts her because of her relations with Erik, a huntsman. To prove her constancy, Senta jumps from a cliff into the sea. The Dutchman’s ship, with all her crew, sinks immediately, and above the wreck the forms of Senta and the Dutchman, embracing each other, are seen rising from the sea and float upwards into the sky.
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 778, 18 June 1954, Page 18
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404THE FLYING DUTCHMAN New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 778, 18 June 1954, Page 18
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
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