from a storm that is raging on the open sea.  Daland, the skipper, has gone ashore to survey the land and to find out, if he can, whither his ship has been driven.  He recognizes the spot:  it is Sandwike, and the tempest has blown him “sieben Meilen” out of his course.  However, he is glad enough to be safe; and seeing signs of better weather goes into his cabin to wait, leaving a watchman on guard.  This is the first specimen of the old stage-craft; Daland had to be got rid of, so, instead of attending to any damage the waves may have caused the ship, he goes quietly downstairs to take a snooze.  The watchman tries to keep himself awake by singing.  But it is no use.  The librettist is inexorable:  the stage is wanted for some one else; and the watchman’s song merely acts as a soporific, and at last the poor fellow snores.  In the distance appears the ship of the Flying Dutchman—­“blutroth die Segel, schwarz der Mast”—­she nears rapidly, enters the fiord and casts anchor hard by Daland’s boat, and Vanderdecken comes ashore.  It is the seventh year, and he has the usual short respite in which to seek the maid who will redeem him.  He has a long soliloquy; then, in the nick of time, Daland awakes, comes on deck, unjustly reproaches the watchman for dozing, hails the Dutchman, and joins him on the rocks for a chat.  They soon grow friendly and strike a bargain.  Daland is to take the stranger home with him, and if his daughter Senta proves satisfactory, Vanderdecken is to have her as his bride in return for infinite treasure out of the hold of the strange vessel.  Daland has been shown a sample, and is overjoyed with his bargain:  a distinguished-looking husband for his daughter and the husband’s wealth for himself.  The wind changes to a favourable one; Daland sets out first, leaving the Dutchman to follow in a boat which we may well believe goes faster, for it is driven by the devil and carries a private hurricane wherever it goes.  The convenient veering of the wind need not be taken as forced on the stage manager by the librettist, for Daland foretells it at the very beginning of the act.

I do not wish to treat so noble a work as the Flying Dutchman with any irreverence; but if it is worth understanding Wagner’s art, and the slow processes of its transition from the baldness and ultra-conventionality of Rienzi to the richness and simplicity and directness of Tristan, we must realize clearly that in its present stage the craftsmanship was little in advance of Scribe’s.  In some respects he was very far in advance of Scribe.  The whole thing springs from and swings round a central idea, the idea of the lonely outcast doomed to sail a stormy sea for ever without even the prospect of hell as a refuge, always seeking one to redeem him and free him from his torments, and at last finding her.  But Wagner had not yet evolved or invented the technique which would enable him to present his idea in the theatre without resorting to those crude conventionalities