Senta and her friends are at work spinning. The girls tease her for being so absorbed in the Dutchman’s portrait, and then ask her to sing his ballad. She jumps up and declares that hers will be the love that breaks the curse and saves him. Her suitor Erik (a hunter, not a sailor) entering with news of the sailors’ homecoming, asks Senta to plead his case with her father. She is evasive, preferring to sympathize with the picture she studies. Then he tells Senta about a dream in which he saw her father coming ashore with a ghastly stranger, and Senta embracing the stranger and sailing away with him. She avows that that is what she must do. He rushes away in despair. Daland enters and presents the Dutchman as Senta’s bridegroom. She is transfixed. The Dutchman is equally moved by the meeting. Daland is delighted that Senta has accepted the stranger’s request.

Two ships are seen and a sailor’s song is heard. Daland’s crew tries to get the crew of the Dutchman to join their merrymaking, but there is no answer. The Norwegian crew begins to taunt the Dutch crew, and they finally appear and sing as bluish flames run up their sails. Daland’s sailors are terrified. Erik and Senta come out of the house. He reminds her of how she had received and encouraged his love. Now he is afraid she is possessed. The Dutchman, overhearing, bids Senta farewell, for he believes he is unloved. Erik and others try to hold her back from following the Dutchman, who proclaims his identity and puts out to sea. Senta breaks away and rushes to the cliff’s edge, calling out that she knows who he is and she will be faithful unto death. She casts herself into the sea. The ship sinks, the sea rises and the forms of Senta and the Dutchman float upward in the light.