which seemed harmless and even reasonable enough at the time, though now they compel us to smile.  He could no more have constructed the framework of the Dutchman without shoving on and pulling off his puppets as seemed desirable than he could have written the music without using the set forms, airs, duets, etc., of a type of opera which, in intention, he had already gone far beyond.  The conventionality shows itself in one rather surprising way.  Throughout the opera it is made plain that the whole world knows the Dutchman story:  mariners shiver when they think of meeting him; children are scared when they are told of him.  Yet when the very ship described in the “old ballad,” sung in the second act, sails into the fiord with its blood-red sails and black masts, no one evinces the faintest astonishment.  Daland has the Dutchman’s picture at home; he sees the ship before his eyes; but in a matter-of-fact manner he asks him who he is.  Daland’s sailors are called on deck to set sail, and pay no attention to so weird a craft.

In the next act we have a room in Daland’s house.  A number of girls are spinning; Senta alone is idle, absorbed in a portrait that hangs on the wall—­that of Vanderdecken.  From earliest girlhood she has heard his tale and brooded over it; and self-sacrifice being her hobby, she has evidently worked herself up into a morbid state of mind and resolved to “redeem” the unfortunate man should the opportunity occur.  This is honest work, not Scribe make-believe.  Cases in which men and women have wrought themselves into an exalted mood and planned and achieved deeds, great or small, noble or ignoble, but always more or less mad, are common enough in history to justify a dramatist in taking a specimen as one of the persons of his drama.  Besides, Senta, from the moment she is seen, stands out as the principal figure.  The Dutchman is there to give character and atmosphere to the piece, but dramatically he is nothing more than Senta’s opportunity personified.  The girls spin on; a kind of forewoman, Mary, upbraids Senta with idling and staring at the picture and dreaming away her life—­for the girl is quite open about her sympathy with the accursed seafaring man.  She wants Mary to sing the Flying Dutchman ballad; Mary curtly refuses; “Then,” rejoins Senta, for all the world like a leading lady in a melodrama giving the cue for the band to begin the royalty-song, “I’ll sing it myself”; and, despite protests, she does.  It recounts, of course, the story of the Dutchman prior to his meeting with Daland.  At the end she announces her intention of saving him; and while the women are expostulating, Eric rushes in to add his voice to theirs.  He tells them Daland’s ship is in sight; and all save he and Senta scurry off to make preparations.  Eric wishes to marry her, and pleads his cause; she asks him what his griefs are compared with those of the doomed man whose picture hangs on the wall.  He (rightly) thinks her semi-demented, and tells a dream he had: