Richard Wagner’s first Romantic opera centers on a man tormented by self-doubt who seeks a wife to stand beside him. Yet it is not erotic desire that drives the pale, black-clad figure to seek a bride. Never is there talk of longing for passion or tenderness in him. His true wish is, above all, to die. Countless suicide attempts are not the sole, but the most conspicuous, symptom of his depression — another is the loss of any remaining hope.
Still, a spark of hope survives: a bride who would agree to a sham marriage with him as an outsider would spell salvation. So far he has failed to find such a bride — not surprising, given that she would have to accept his lack of sexual interest in her and assume the thankless role of a cover wife.
He is not in harmony with his drives
Despite the death-wish, it would be a mistake to picture the Dutchman as a man without libido. This is hinted at by the kinetic, turbulent service of the strings that flank his appearances again and again — especially in the storm motif, which is reused throughout the score and creates a wavering rhythm. When the Dutchman appears, he does not merely bring a hurricane-like weather pattern; inside him, there roars and rages a passion that threatens to wrench the ground out from under him. In other words: he is not in harmony with his drives. He experiences them as a curse because they mark him as an outcast — and for that very reason he longs for death. Yet in truth he longs for belonging and for acceptance.
Which prohibition his passion touches on is barely mentioned in the libretto. The trigger for his ostracism seems almost trivial: once he swore to sail around the Cape of Good Hope, against all odds, and was condemned to eternal restlessness for it. The punishment is out of proportion, yet the Flying Dutchman’s ship subsequently serves as a nightmare image for all pious people.
Gay sexuality at sea
Here the suspicion arises that behind the ostensibly simple cause for the curse lies a taboo that long remained unspeakable. The early-20th-century psychoanalyst Wilhelm Stekel even suggested in 1921 that the legendary Dutchman is driven by latent homoerotic longing that continually misses its mark. More plausible is the view that the life at sea provides a niche where sexuality can be expressed in a way that isn’t sublimated but lived openly and concretely. Wagner himself may have encountered this idea while reading Heinrich Heine’s Aus den Memoiren des Herrn von Schnabelewopski (1834). In one moment the narrator suggests that the Phoenicians might have founded the port of Hamburg and Altona as a refuge for the sinking Sodom and Gomorrah. Right after comes the Dutch myth.
For a long time, homosexuality in maritime culture was a taboo topic. Slowly, however, it has become acknowledged that among pirates same-sex relations were not unknown. The phenomenon found a vivid echo in 20th‑century gay subculture as a sailors’ fetish. Drawings by Jean Cocteau or Tom of Finland depicted muscular sailors in sexual acts, while the photographic duo Pierre & Gilles captured them in a more androgynous kissing variant. Village People’s disco anthem In the Navy celebrates that high-sea lifestyle. Literarily, Jean Genet’s Querelle delves into the sailor’s life. And the nautical slang term cruising has become the emblem of seeking gay encounters.
“God, what must I see!”
Seen in this light, the trigger that makes the naive brides and grooms’ hairs stand on end during the opera’s third act wedding preparations takes on a different hue. From the Hollander’s ship’s dark belly there suddenly emanates a harsh soundscape: rising singing, raucous whoops and vulgar laughter. There, a bachelor party is celebrated in a form that is announced by the fanfare-like spirit call of the men’s chorus: “Johohe!”
After the orgiastic high point of this interlude — during which the Dutchmen are heard but not seen — silence returns. The most terrifying thing for the onlookers are the images conjured by their own imaginations. “God, what must I see!” exclaims Erik, Sentas ardent admirer, beside himself with arousal. When he presses himself forward as her protector, she confidently repels him. For what Erik finds shocking is precisely what makes Senta’s attraction to the Dutchman so potent. His fate is already well known to her — she perhaps even senses his sexual preferences. From her father, who had extolled him as the “greatest good,” pledged to her with faithful childlike devotion, she was denied, in adolescence, any possibility for rebellion.
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All the more does she yearn for a wild, nonconforming way of life that the Dutch ship seems to promise in her eyes. Senta embodies the archetype of that heterosexual woman who identifies predominantly with gay men and who finds in their proximity a safe space. In the Anglo-American sphere, she would be casually labeled a “fag hag” or, in German, a “Schwulenmutti.” A closer variant of this dynamic is the gay icon, who through exaltation becomes almost immortalized. Senta attains such a status at the opera’s final act, when she ascends with the Dutchman among the stars to the softly lyrical woodwinds. Before that, the orchestra still explodes with a thunder of tympani, trombones, and trumpets.
The longing that finds no homeland
Even the deification of sailors resonates with modern queer cultural history. Barbra Streisand, Marilyn Monroe, Kylie Minogue, and others posed in sailor attire as a bold fashion and identity statement. Yet the most famous reimagining of Sentas persona is pop goddess Madonna, immortalized in the sailor look by the gay photographer Herb Ritts.
Wagner conceived the idea of setting the Flying Dutchman material during a stormy sea voyage. In Dresden’s court theatre, expectations were high after Rienzi’s success, anticipating a triumph that would follow suit. Instead, the premiere audience of January 1843 greeted the work with notable reserve. Wagner would later concede that the singers were not suited to their roles. After only a handful of performances, the piece was shelved — until it found its breakthrough in Kassel in June of the same year under Louis Spohr’s staging and the use of elaborate special effects.
Even today, the Dutchman can be read as a symbol — of desire that has no homeland and yet continues to live on in its otherness.
For TheColu.mn, Axel Krämer has reworked his queer reading of “The Flying Dutchman” from the opera guide “Casta Diva.”
