The short visit your dear wife paid the Dresdeners should have been longer and it should have been made in your company. I particularly wish you could have given a big public musical conversazione here and made people hear some of your things, especially your new quintet. I should be delighted for you to see for yourself that the public taste here is no longer hopelessly prejudiced against you. The age of Belliniism is quite past here. It is not surprising that in a place where nothing but an Italian opera existed for a long period a preference for Italian music should still live on, particularly when a Schroder-Devrient, finding no material for her tremendous dramatic powers in new German works, threw herself into the presentation of Bellini roles with constrained enthusiasm. She charmed people everywhere else in these parts - and here too. But now, since this preference even in our artistes has at last given way to disgust and they turn to the study of more genuine music with extraordinary zest, the public too has shown itself willing and eager to accept the tendency towards a higher level of taste. There has been a genuine change here and a demand is universally expressed for a higher type of aesthetic enjoyment, but this is the point at which it must be admitted that our lovers of art are in a difficult position. We have nothing here at all comparable to your Gewandhaus concerts; the sole miserable substitutes are subscription concerts got up by the conductor of a military band, but they are attended by our public with an interest which might easily find a more worthy object. Our orchestra can at present do nothing to meet the public demand for more frequent performances of really good instrumental works, owing to an abuse which must in any case shortly be removed. For the moment we have only our operatic productions to boast of and, as far as that goes, a mere glance at our repertoire cannot fail to convince you that the day of Belliniism is past.
Let me also say that it speaks at least for the earnestness of our public that such a composition as my Flying Dutchman was so warmly received here. Your remarks on this work after having gone through the score go to confirm this statement of mine, for the objections you advanced on the ground of its gloomy colouring, and which I acknowledge as well founded, would properly have led one to suppose that such a work would never do here. Since, however, the public appreciates this work more and more the oftener it is heard, I think I may not unsuitably cite it to give you a better opinion of the radical change in taste which is constantly spreading here. For the rest I agree with everything which according to your present knowledge of it you have to say of my opera. Only one thing startles me and I admit it incenses me, and that is that you calmly tell me that I often have a flavour of Meyerbeer. Really, I simply cannot conceive what in this wide world could be called Meyerbeerish except, perhaps, the artful attempt to win a shallow popularity. If, indeed, there were anything real and self-consistent which could be called of the spirit of Meyerbeer, in the sense in which one may speak of the spirit of Beethoven, or even, if you like, of the spirit of Rossini, I submit that it could still only be by some amazing freak of nature that I could draw upon a source of which the least whiff wafted from afar nauseates me. It is no more nor less than a death sentence upon my creative power, and the fact that you can pronounce it shows me clearly that you still have no really impartial opinion of me but only one deduced from the knowledge that circumstances have brought me into certain relations with Meyerbeer the man, for which I owe him a debt of gratitude. As regards a publicly established verdict on my work, I am very glad of the prospect of soon seeing my operas made widely known by performance, for the pronouncements of local criticism here have, unfortunately, not a farthing's value either to me or to the cause of truth in general.
Your quintet pleased me very much. I asked your dear wife to play it. The first two movements in particular still run twice through my head. If I had heard the fourth movement first I think perhaps I might have liked it better. I see what you are aiming at and assure you it is my aim too. Beauty! In it alone is salvation.
Richard Wagner
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Volume 1, ed. Altmann/Hull (London: Dent, 1927), No. 83