The French Connection: Wagner and the Opéra

Abstract

This article considers the nature of the first draft of the synopsis-in French, as Le Hollandais volant-of what became Der fliegende Hollander; the sale of that synopsis to the new director of the Opera, Leon Pillet (identifying the journalist and administrator who arranged the sale); the use made of the synopsis-very little-by the eventual authors of the French opera, Le Vaisseau fantome; and the genesis of the revised ending of the Hollander (the Tristan-Schluss) set down at the time of Wagner’s concerts in Paris in 1860.