The matter which I recently had the honour of explaining to you in Leipzig is of such great importance to me that I feel impelled to press you to reconsider it sympathetically before coming to a decision. I may now take it that, the present management of the Royal Court Theatre of Berlin having passed a favourable verdict upon the merits of my opera, The Flying Dutchman, and accepted it for production at that theatre, you are already in a position to weigh the matter which I recently proposed. But although this verdict might favourably incline you to decide to produce my opera, I should feel I had no grounds for attempting to urge you to accelerate that production, were it not my very lively desire that the performance of my Flying Dutchman in Berlin should precede the imminent appearance in Paris next autumn of a work entitled Le Vaisseau Fantome [by Louis Dietsch]. I take the liberty of writing to explain to you without loss of time the exact relationship between the two operas, and of informing you of the fact that the complete sketch-plan for the libretto of the Vaisseau Fantome is a plagiarism from mine, and that the plot is based on that of my Flying Dutchman. You once said yourself that the circumstance of the libretto of a French opera being based in all its main outlines upon a German was rare, if not in its kind unique, apropos of which I must be permitted to say that this case presents a not disadvantageous contrast to the many other cases in which, contrariwise, Germans have felt it necessary to borrow operatic plots from their French neighbours. It may be fairly deduced that here is a subject somewhat out of the ordinary, also that the man who conceived it is the best man to carry it out, particularly when the result of his work has proved acceptable to the Berlin Court Theatre. As stated above, the opera composed upon this subject by a Frenchman under the title of Le Vaisseau Fantome is to be produced in Paris this autumn, and the unfortunate custom still prevailing among our German theatrical managers of having French pieces translated with the greatest expedition and giving them at once at their theatres makes it probable that if this piece has any success in Paris it will immediately appear on the German stage. Yet since I have preserved my intellectual integrity and carried out in my native tongue a subject conceived by myself and set it to music, my opera, if it had the good fortune to be produced in advance of the other at the first theatre in Germany, would, I believe, arouse the public interest in a purely German product and the French version, a hotch-potch in any case, would attract little notice. Being in possession of these facts in advance, you will now be fully aware that you have in your hands the fate of a work whose not entirely commonplace merits are vouched for, not indeed by my name, but by the facts to which I have called your attention. The furtherance of my interests entrusted to you, though but a small part of the interests of the whole world of German art, may yet be regarded as an earnest of your noble purpose of raising the status of the despised German opera and, being appreciated as such, cannot fail to make a deep impression upon all my German fellow-artists, since the special circumstances of this case must sooner or later become public knowledge.
Richard Wagner
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Volume 1, ed. Altmann/Hull (London: Dent, 1927), No. 67