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Dessauer had come across my poem of the Fliegender Hollander, and now insisted that I should draft a similar plot for him, as M. Leon Pillet's Vaisseau Fantome had already been given to M. Dietsch, the letter's musical conductor, to set to music.
Actuated by this modest ambition he had completed an opera, Farinelli, for which he had also written the libretto, with no other aspiration than that of attaining the same reputation as his brother-in-law Lortzing. He brought this score to me, and begged me it was his first visit before he had heard one of my operas in Dresden to play him something from Rienzi and the Fliegender Hollander.
No one could fail to be equally affected by these qualities, and I now realised for the first time the almost magic power exerted by Liszt over all who came in close contact with him, and saw how erroneous had been my former opinion as to its cause. These two excursions to Leipzig and Berlin found but brief interruptions of the period devoted at home to our study of the Fliegender Hollander.
The first necessity was at all costs to secure peace and quietness for myself for the short time which I should have to devote to the overture of the Fliegender Hollander; I told Kietz that he would have to procure the money necessary for my household expenses until this work was finished and the full score of the opera sent off.
Although Wachter was far from realising my conception of the Fliegender Hollander I could not conceal from myself the fact that Tichatschek was quite as far removed from the ideal Rienzi.
At the very beginning the prospects did indeed seem bright; the score of my Fliegender Hollander was ordered by the Royal Theatre at Cassel and by the Riga theatre, which I had known so well in the old days, because they were anxious to perform something of mine at an early date, and had heard that this opera was on a smaller scale, and made smaller demands on the stage management, than Rienzi.
But never did another word concerning the Fliegender Hollander pass his lips, beyond inquiries as to the second performance, and as to whether Devrient or some one else would appear in it.
This was done at a very heavy loss, and the furniture, the greater part of which was still unpaid for, was sacrificed to pay the rent of a dwelling which we no longer occupied. Under the stress of the most terrible privations I still endeavoured to secure sufficient leisure for working out the orchestration of the score of the Fliegender Hollander.
As a matter of fact, Spohr had written to me on one occasion, and had declared that, stimulated by the success of my Fliegender Hollander and his own enjoyment of it, he had once more decided to take up the career of a dramatic composer, which of recent years had brought him such scant success.
In flowing and impressive language he related that he had been present at the performance that night of my Fliegender Hollander, and could well conceive the humour in which the evening's experiences had left me. For this very reason he felt that nothing should hinder him from speaking to me that night, and telling me that in the Fliegender Hollander I had produced an unrivalled masterpiece.
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