A look at Wagner’s Parisian ambitions, and why he ultimately decided to take his ball home.

The tale of The Flying Dutchman attracted Wagner’s attention in the summer of 1838 when he was 25 and living in Riga. Less than a year later, having outworn his welcome as music director largely because of his uncompromising demands on the provincial theatre, orchestra and singers (he rehearsed and conducted 39 operas in two years there, and gave numerous subscription concerts), he fled the Baltic city in 1839, leaving creditors in his wake. 

Wagner knew his own worth even if the citizens of Riga did not and, in any case, he took the view that there were better prospects in Paris where another German, Giacomo Meyerbeer, ruled the operatic roost. The plan now was to enlist Meyerbeer’s help and make the giant leap from a backwater of the Russian Empire to the operatic centre of the world. It was a hubristic gesture worthy of the Dutchman himself and, in Senta’s words, “Satan heard … and took him at his word”. For Wagner as much as for the Dutchman, the way to salvation would be torturous.