Jos Janssen ended a wonderful post with the questions:

>To react again on above quote and to sum up: Maybe the composer wants
>to transfer something, but it is so much more interesting that you allow
>emotion to be transferred to you, or putting it more to the point: that
>you allow emotion to rise, to have your sense of romantic and rational
>beauty be tickled and be prepared to be inspired.  Robert's examples
>above show that he looks capable of these emotions.  But to put the
>record straight: Was THE Hollander really poor, or do YOU just feel
>he was poor, or do you FEEL like a poor Hollander?

Well, at the beginning of the opera (which I like a lot, almost the
only one by Wagner I really admire) the Hollander is so bereaved and so
desperate (remember his wonderful scene "Die Frist ist um") that I really
think that he is a pretty poor chap - and since I sympathize with him I
feel a little bit like a poor Hollander myself (living only 10 kilometres
away from the Netherlands makes this feeling more authentic).  But all
this is pretty subjective and others may think the Hollander is not a
poor chap after all - but how could they prove this from the opera?

Robert