Description: Thoughts and impressions about musicians, composers and their music
He and his wife illegally crossed the Prussian border, and they found a captain of a ship that would take them to London. The trip should have taken about a week, but due to high winds and rough seas, the trip took over two weeks. His arrival in Paris turned out to be a disaster as well. His opera wasn't performed at the Paris Opera, and he had to rely on hand outs and the meager money he made writing articles for periodicals of the time.
It was while he was in Paris that he had the idea to write a one act opera based on the Flying Dutchman legend . Wagner wrote in his Autobiographical Sketch of 1842:
It was his hope that the short opera would be accepted by the Paris Opera for performance. His experience of the sea journey, especially when the ship had to take shelter in a Norwegian fjord from the rough seas, that inspired him. He based the libretto on a story written by the German author Heinrich Heine that was based on the story. Heine's story was written as a satire, but Wagner made the story a serious tale of redemption through the love of a woman.