After the success of his third completed opera "Rienzi," Wagner turned to the adaptation of a subject he had encountered years earlier in Heinrich Heine's "Schnabelewopski" fragment. For the first time in "The Flying Dutchman," a theme emerges that would be central to Wagner's work all the way to his final music drama "Parsifal": the idea of redemption. The "Dutchman" also marks the composer’s first step from the number opera to the through-composed music drama. This book contains, in addition to the libretto, introductory comments by Kurt Pahlen. He accompanies the musical as well as the external and internal dramatic events of the opera with insights into compositional structure and thematic connections. A brief summary of the plot and an overview of the work's genesis place it in the context of the composer’s overall oeuvre and biography.