Kate Hopkins, Deluded Neurotic or Visionary Woman of the Future? Senta Revalued

March 2018, Volume 12, Number 1, 67–77.

Richard Wagner cited his fourth opera Der fliegende Holländer as the work with which he began his ‘career as a poet’ rather than as a ‘mere concocter of opera-texts’. One thing that undoubtedly helped him to make this advance was his invention of the opera’s heroine Senta, a character with no precedents in his earlier works and few in the entire operatic repertory. That Wagner felt he was breaking important new ground with Senta is clear from his description of her as ‘the longed-for, the dreamt-of, the infinitely womanly Woman – let me out with it in one word, the Woman of the Future’. She inspired him to create a further series of charismatic, strong-willed and self-sacrificing heroines, culminating in Brünnhilde, and he also later drew parallels between the Dutchman’s relationship with her, and his own with Cosima von Bülow. But what was it about Senta that made Wagner hold her in such affection? And can we feel the same about her today?