Overture: Der fliegende Holländer (The Flying Dutchman)

The Overture to Der fliegende Holländer plunges straight into the storm that is to cast the Dutchman and his ship, with its blood-red sails, black masts and ghostly crew, onto the rocky shore of a Norwegian fjord. Condemned to perpetual wandering of the seas until a woman is prepared to sacrifice her life out of love for him, he is allowed ashore once every seven years to find his saviour. The opening storm music, in which the Dutchman’s motif is so violently tossed around by wind and waves, seems to suggest that this period ashore will be no more fruitful than all the others. As the storm dies down, however, a cor anglais anticipates a melody that is to be associated in the opera with Senta, the sailor’s daughter destined to redeem the Dutchman from the curse that has been laid upon him. The storm music is resumed but now with Senta’s melody integrated into it. Other material is introduced, including a cheerful Norwegian sailor’s chorus from the third act, but the Dutchman’s motif and Senta’s melody predominate, the latter securing a redemptive ending in anticipation of the final transfiguration of the lovers in the opera itself.

Written in Paris in 1841 – and inspired to some extent by the composer’s own terrifying experience of storms in the North Sea – Der Fliegende Holländer was first performed in Dresden two years later.