Education Guide The Flying Dutchman by ... - Edmonton Opera

The Story Behind the Story
Like most great operas, The Flying Dutchman takes its story from somewhere else. In
this case, many somewhere elses! If you’ve seen The Pirates of the Caribbean movies with
Johnny Depp, you will have heard of the Dutchman and his cursed ship. The story is
part myth, part history, part biblical parable, so what follows are only a few
incarnations of a very popular story.
According to folklore, the Flying Dutchman is a ghost ship that can never go home and
must sail forever. Intriguingly, there is some confusion as to whether Flying Dutchman is
the name of the ship or the captain. Like most legends, different tellings contradict each
other and evolve over time. Here are a few early versions:
• The German version names Captain Falkenburg as the Dutchman, and states that
in a bet with the Devil, Falkenburg threw the dice and lost his soul, thereby being
condemned to sail the seas for all eternity.
• In the British telling, a Dutch vessel was attempting to navigate the Cape of
Good Hope when a terrible storm threatened to sink the ship. The Captain (in
this case Hendrik van der Decken) refused to return to port, and apparently
shouted, “May I be eternally damned if I do [return to port], though I should
beat about here till the day of Judgment” (Blackwood’s Magazine May 1821), and
he was cursed by the Devil to do just that.
• According to still other sources, the 17 th century Dutch Captain Bernard Fokke is
the model for the legendary ghost. Fokke was known for the uncannily fast trips
he made from Holland to Java, and he was suspected of having made a deal with
the Devil in order to achieve his quick trips.
Even Wagner’s sources are muddled: in one instance he claimed to be inspired by a
stormy sea voyage he took in 1839, but in his autobiography he claims to have taken the
story from Heinrich Heine’s The Memoirs of Mister Schnabelewopski (or Aus den Memoiren
des Herrn von Schnabelewopski). This was a multi-layered fictional memoir in which a
young Polish man recalls his life in Germany and the Netherlands. In the course of the
story, the young man sees a play about the Dutchman, which some scholars believe was
actually Edward Fitzball’s 1826 play, The Flying Dutchman. Heine also introduces the
“Mrs. Dutchman” character, whose love would save the Dutchman from his curse.
Education Guide
The Flying Dutchman
by Richard Wagner
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