oral aspect of the play at this juncture.
Vanderdecken is merely a greedy, selfish skipper who, having got into
some trouble, is anxious that a pure young maiden should throw away
her life that he may be comfortable. Not any casuistry or splitting of
hairs can alter the plain fact--

"Wirst du des Vaters Wahl nicht schelten?
Was er versprach, wie?--duerft' es gelten?"

However, he has the honesty to warn her of her probable fate. She
rises to the occasion. She may be as mad as a hatter, but in the music
she is given to "Der du auch sei'st," her lunacy becomes sublimity. Up
to the moment of writing this white-hot glowing passage Wagner had
never reached the sublime: now for a few minutes he sustains it.
Again the breath of the sea is brought in when the Dutchman a second
time warns her, and the sea music roars as a sinister accompaniment.
Senta only becomes the more exalted. "Wohl kenn' ich Weibes heil'ge
Pflichten," she sings to music which is absolutely the finest page in
the opera. The pure white flame of a deathless devotion is here. I
doubt whether Wagner ever again in his life had such an ethereal
moment: it is sheer fervour and sweetness, unmixed with the hot human
passion of _Tristan_ or the smoky philosophies of the _Ring_. To wish
Senta had a reasonable cause for her ecstasy of self-immolation is, of
course, to wish the _Dutchman_ were not the _Dutchman_. In truth, we
must take the scenes as they come without inquiring too curiously; the
storm music which goes with the wanderer, and the moments of glorious
splendour that come to the redeeming woman, are things worth living to
have written and worth living to hear.

The music of the last act I shall pass quickly over. The seamen's and
women's choruses are not particularly striking; the spectral choruses
certainly are. The sea music is here turned into something unearthly,
frightful; these damned souls have no hope of being saved, and in
their misery they scoff and mock and laugh hideously. More new musical
matter, some of it of a very fine quality, is introduced when Eric
again appeals to Senta; and the figure (_a_) is developed with
stupendous effect. In the final scene, when the Dutchman goes off,
Senta can say nothing more after her declarations in the
second--nothing, that is, of any musical value; and Wagner has wisely
confined her to recitative.

The _Flying Dutchman_, then, has many weaknesses. The libretto is a
manufacture, not, like _Trista