Phantom of the Opéra: Mike Ashman evaluates a ghostly double-bill

Review of Wagner, Der fliegende Holländer and Dietsch, Le Vaisseau fantôme, conducted Minkowski, Grenoble (Naïve, 4 CDs).

March 2014, Volume 8, Number 1, 88–91.

‘When the end of the world comes, make your way to Holland’, recommended Heinrich Heine (1797–1856): ‘Everything happens there fifty years late.’ Even through his characteristic irony, Heine’s endorsement speaks clearly of the affection he felt for a country more tolerant of his Judaism and political beliefs than his native Germany. Nearer 300 than 50 years late Holland provided Heine with the legend of the phantom ship and its cursed Dutch skipper. The poet first incorporated the tale, ‘Die Fabel vom Holländer’, into his 1827 travel journal Reisebilder, subsequently developing it (in both a German and a French version) into his mock-autobiographical Aus den Memoiren des Herren von Schnabelewopski.