Dear friend Liszt,
From all I hear, you have recently added to the unequalled successes of your former life and artistic activity a new one, which is probably not inferior to the foremost of its predecessors and in many respects perhaps surpasses them all. Do you suppose I cannot judge this from a distance? Hear if I can. No theatre in the world has so far thought it advisable to perform my opera Tannhäuser four years after its production; it was left to you to settle down for a time, after your world-wide travels, at a small court theatre, and at once to set to work so that your much-tried friend might at last get on a little.
You did not talk or fuss; you yourself undertook the unaccustomed task of teaching my work to the people. Be sure that no one knows as well as I what it means to bring such a work to light in existing circumstances. Who the deuce does not conduct operatic rehearsals nowadays? You were intent not only upon giving the opera, but upon making it understood and received with applause. That meant throwing yourself into the work body and soul, sacrificing body and soul, pressing and exerting every fibre of the body and every faculty of the soul toward the one aim of not only producing your friend's work, but of producing it splendidly and to his advantage. You had to be sure that it would succeed, for only with a view to success had you begun the work; and therein lies the force of your character and of your ability: you have succeeded.
If I have judged your beautiful action rightly, if I have understood you, I hope you will understand me too when, in words as brief and precise as was your action, I say to you, I thank you, dear friend!
You, however, wished not only to benefit my work, but to benefit me as well; you know that my position is that of a somewhat hemmed-in, forsaken, solitary man. You desired to make friends for me, and had a sufficiently good opinion of my work to think that the spreading of it abroad would gain friends for me. Dear friend, by that very means you have at this moment lifted me up as by a charm.
It is not to complain, but merely to convince you of the force of that impression, when I tell you that just now, in the very week when you gave my Tannhäuser at Weimar, our manager insulted me in so gross a manner that for several days I was discussing with myself whether I should bear any longer to be exposed to such infamous treatment for the bite of bread that my service here gives me to eat, and whether I should not rather throw up art and earn my bread as a labourer, to be at least free from the despotism of malignant ignorance. Thank God! The news from Weimar and Tichatschek's greetings and accounts have again strengthened me. I once more have courage to suffer. This also I owe to you!
Richard Wagner
Source: Project Gutenberg eBook #3835, Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt — Volume 1, No. 13