and that the air is salt and fresh there.  There is a pervading dreamy atmosphere:  again we are carried away into far-off times; the scene has the unreality of a dream, a dream of the sea.  Mlle. Senta quickly shatters that illusion with her passion and living young blood; but in memory one always has this cottage, where women pass the days in singing, where there are no clocks, and time can only be measured by the waves as they break on the shore.  The maiden’s spinning song is small scale music; nothing ambitious is wanted, and nothing ambitious is attempted.  As a bit of music it is infinitely superior to the clumsy wooden bridal chorus in Lohengrin; the touch is light, the melodies fresh and dainty, and the subdued hum of the wheels and the bustle are suggested throughout without becoming monotonous.  Not for a musical, but for a purely theatrical, reason we get a snatch of (k); Senta is not spinning; she is engaged in staring at the picture.  After much chattering she sings the ballad, and at the end declaims her intention of saving the Dutchman to the music which is employed when she actually accomplishes that feat.  When Eric rushes in, the orchestra has the usual operatic storm-in-a-teacup sort of stuff; the chattering chorus of women getting ready for Daland’s reception is neither here nor there; Eric’s expostulations are insignificant, and the air he sings—­with interruptions on the part of Senta—­is by no means equal to the better parts of the opera.  Here Wagner has again been faced by the difficulty he met in the first act:  a prosaic scene had to be set to poetic music, and the task was beyond him.  Eric is one of the most frightfully conventional personages in opera; he bores and exasperates one to madness.  He warbles away in the approved Italian tenor fashion while one’s enthusiasm is growing cold and one’s interest waning.  His dream, however, in which he sees Senta meet the Dutchman, embrace him and sail away with him, has a genuine ring.  The atmosphere is strange, almost nightmareish, with the Dutchman theme sounding up at intervals, dreamlike.  With the exception of the mere mention of this motive in the score, the music is new, is not evolved out of previous passages; but when Eric has finished we hear the Senta theme, both sections.  The Dutchman and Daland enter, and we hear (f) three times in all; but there is no development of it.  Daland’s air is entirely fresh matter; as is the opening of the big duet between the Dutchman and Senta.

We are now approaching the supreme moment of the drama.  The Dutchman’s recitative-like beginning—­declamation of the same type, and with the same accent, as some recitative in the song-tournament in Tannhaeuser—­is noble in the highest degree; we have a recurrence of the dream-atmosphere at Senta’s words, “Versank ich jetzt in wunderbares Traeumen?”—­for though her fanaticism is all too real, when her opportunity comes she is for the moment incredulous.  It hardly does to consider the moral 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—­