Dearest friend,
The second performance of your masterpiece has answered my expectations, and the third and fourth will bring home to everyone the opinion I expressed as soon as we began rehearsing Lohengrin: namely, that this work will confer on a public making itself worthy of understanding and enjoying it more honour than that public could confer upon the work by any amount of applause. “Perish all theatrical mud!” I exclaimed when we tried for the first time the first scenes of Lohengrin. “Perish all critical mud and the routine of artists and the public!” I have added a hundred times during the last six weeks. At last, and very much at last, I have the satisfaction of being able to assure you very positively that your work will be better executed and better heard and understood from performance to performance. This last point is, in my opinion, the most important of all, for it is not only the singers and the orchestras that must be brought up to the mark to serve as instruments in the dramatic revolution, which you so eloquently describe in your letter to Zigesar, but also, and before all, the public, which must be elevated to a level where it becomes capable of associating itself by sympathy and intelligent comprehension with conceptions of a higher order than that of the lazy amusements with which it feeds its imagination and sensibility at our theatres every day. This must be done, if need be, by violence, for, as the Gospel tells us, the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and only those who use violence will take it. I fully understand the motive which has made you speak with diplomatic reserve of the audiences of Lohengrin in your letter to Zigesar, and I approve of it. At the same time, it is certain that, in order to realize completely the drama which you conceive, and of which you give us such magnificent examples in Tannhäuser and Lohengrin, it is absolutely necessary to make a breach in the old routine of criticism, the long ears and short sight of “Philistia,” as well as the stupid arrogance of that self-sufficient fraction of the public which believes itself the destined judge of works of art by dint of birthright.
The enemy to whom, as you, my great art-hero, rightly put it, one should not capitulate, is not only in the throats of the singers, but also very essentially in the lazy and at the same time tyrannical habits of the hearers. On these as well as on the others one must make an impression, if necessary, by a good beating. This you understand better than I could tell you. In accordance with your desire, we have at the second performance of Lohengrin not omitted a single syllable, for after your letter it would, in my opinion, have been a crime to venture upon the slightest cut.
As I took occasion to tell those of my friends who were here on August 28th, the performance of your works, so long as you entrust me with their absolute direction, is with me a question of principle and of honour. In these two things one must never make a concession; and, as far as I am personally concerned, you may rest perfectly assured that I shall not fail in anything which you have a right to expect from me. In spite of this, both Herr von Zigesar and Genast feel bound, in the interest of your work, to address you some observations, which I, for my part, have declined to submit to you, although I think them somewhat justified by the limits of our theatre and of our public, which are as yet far behind my wishes and even my hopes. If you think it advisable to agree to some cuts, kindly let me know your resolution on this subject. Whether you accept those proposed by Genast, or whether you determine upon others, or whether, which is probable, you prefer to keep your work as we have given it twice, I promise you on my honour that your wish shall be strictly carried out, with all the respect and all the submission which you have a right to demand by reason of your genius and of your achievements. Whatever determination you come to in this regard, be certain that in all circumstances you will find in me zeal equal to my admiration and my devotion.
Franz Liszt
Source: Project Gutenberg eBook #3835, Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt — Volume 1, No. 44