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In 1852 he furnished a revised libretto, and the music was revised to suit it. The work was not finished until 1860, and owing to the difficulty of filling the cast satisfactorily, was not brought to rehearsal until the fall of 1863. While still correcting and improving it, Meyerbeer died, and it was not produced until two years later.
In the final scene, when the Dutchman goes off, Senta can say nothing more after her declarations in the second nothing, that is, of any musical value; and Wagner has wisely confined her to recitative. The Flying Dutchman, then, has many weaknesses. The libretto is a manufacture, not, like Tristan, a growth.
Actuated by this modest ambition he had completed an opera, Farinelli, for which he had also written the libretto, with no other aspiration than that of attaining the same reputation as his brother-in-law Lortzing. He brought this score to me, and begged me it was his first visit before he had heard one of my operas in Dresden to play him something from Rienzi and the Fliegender Hollander.
Then they will seek me. Yes" he paused, finished his glass of brandy, and continued, more quietly, as if he were making a great effort after self-control "but is your husband's talent for the stage as great as mine? I doubt it." "Why do you doubt it?" exclaimed Charmian warmly. "What reason have you to doubt it? You have not heard my husband's music to your libretto yet, not a note of it." "No.
He, too, returned it, with the assurance that it was not suited to German stage conditions, or to the taste of the German public. As he had ordered a French libretto for Munich, I knew what he meant.
Kelley was again persuaded to write a comic opera to the artistic libretto, "Puritania," by C.M.S. McLellan, a brilliant satirist, who has since won fortune by his highly successful and frequently artistic burlesquery. The work won excellent praise in Boston, where it had one hundred performances. The work musically was not only conscientious, but really graceful and captivating.
He also seized the opportunity of offering him a libretto for a new oratorio. He had a very good opinion of himself as a poet, and it is possible that he foresaw the importance of the new type of semi-dramatic entertainment which Handel was creating.
So the project of "Ritter Mond" was abandoned, and it is to be regretted that Schumann did not reject his "Genoveva" libretto, which was largely responsible for the failure of the opera. One project of Schumann's is mentioned which it is to be very much regretted he never carried out.
Hoffman's libretto was indeed unworthy of the great music, but this has not prevented its recognition by musicians as one of the noblest operas ever written. It has probably been one of the causes, however, why it is so rarely represented at the present time, its overture alone being well known to modern musical audiences.
All were in capital spirits, and my good-humour enhanced the general cheerfulness, although no one quite understood what connection it could have with the subject on which I had just completed a libretto, and from the performance of which I anticipated so much. In my anxiety to choose a suitable residence, which was now so necessary to me, I directed my steps once more to Karlsruhe.
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