The Flying Dutchman (Der Fliegende Hollaender): Romantic Opera in Three Acts

Three piano arrangements were printed with the libretto. The e-text includes full renditions in MIDI format. Depending on your browser, these may play directly, or may need to be downloaded and opened in another application. In addition, the Music directory includes the three pieces in raw lilypond ( .ly ) format, which can be translated to a number of other music-notation programs, and pdf files generated by lilypond.
Typographical errors are shown in the text with mouse-hover popups . In the German text, inconsistent labeling of acts and scenes is unchanged.
Printed in U.S.A.
A Norwegian brig is driven out of her course on the homeward voyage, and near the rockbound Norwegian Coast meets with the phantom ship of the “Flying Dutchman.” Daland, the captain of the Norwegian vessel, enters into a compact with the “Flying Dutchman” whose identity, however, is unknown to him, to give him a home and his daughter, Senta, for a wife, in consideration of the rich treasures stored away in the “Flying Dutchman’s” ship.
When the curtain rises, a bevy of Norwegian Girls, among whom are Daland’s daughter, Senta and her nurse Mary, are discovered turning their spinning wheels and singing a spinning song. A picture of the “Flying Dutchman” adorns the wall, and Senta, after singing a ballad sketching in incoherent, passionate strains, a story of the subject of the picture, solemnly vows that she will become the means of terminating the torment, to which the “Flying Dutchman” is subjected, and who can only be saved by a woman unwaveringly constant in her love. During the confusion which ensues upon this avowal, the father’s arrival is announced. In the time intervening between this announcement and Daland’s arrival, Erik, Senta’s lover, pleads for his love, and endeavors to persuade Senta that her infatuation for a phantom lover will lead to her irretrievable ruin; but to no avail. Daland arrives and presents the “Flying Dutchman” to his daughter. Senta accepts him as her affianced husband.