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The Phantom Ship in Der fliegende Holländer and L’Africaine

This chapter describes two instances of the re-mediation of grand opera by phantasmagoria, discussing side by side two deployments of the figure of the phantom ship—a seafaring image produced by phantasmagoria at the Adelphi Theatre in of Edward Fitzball’s nautical drama The Flying Dutchman (1826)—in Richard Wagner’s Der fliegende Holländer (1843) and Giacomo Meyerbeer’s L’Africaine (1865). Wagner’s music for the apparitional scenes, discussed in detail in the chapter, suggests a manner of composition adapted from the technical procedure of phantasmagoria and the nautical theatrics cultivated by Fitzball in London. L’Africaine’s nautical scene was also partially inspired by the English figure of the Flying Dutchman, exploring the same idea of magnification that was central to phantasmagorical procedure and to Wagner’s approach to the nautical.