I have again nothing to write about, save to express my regret that there are a number of things I have not once been able during our long personal intercourse to discuss with you by word of mouth. I particularly wished to ask you something about your new compositions, and among these your Peri in particular. I assure you I was delighted with the mere news and title of your composition. I know this marvellous poem and have already passed it through my musical mind. I could, however, light upon no form in which to reproduce the poem and consequently wish you the luck to have found the right one. You are right. The concert-hall, when it is such as you have in Leipzig, may yet become the sole refuge, the only resort for the cultivation of good music. I almost despair of the theatre, despite my success there! What can't win applause on these accursed boards?! Is there any true satisfaction in a success won there? Hardly. The trouble with the theatre is that the audience is made up of people who pay 1 thaler 8 groschen, 16 groschen, 8 groschen and 4 groschen! At your concerts they all pay 16 groschen. That is a great advantage. You have only one class to deal with, we with many, of whom the 1 thaler 8 groschen class is the worst and the 4 groschen class not the best. It is horrible to have to make music for such a mixture and one's only salvation is not to bother about them at all.
I have not written a note since my Love-Feast, but as soon as I am domestically settled here I shall set to upon my Tannhäuser. I have a renewed request from Vienna for an opera for 1844-5. I am to send in a summary of my subject and I have been hesitating about it for six weeks. I have a horror of entering into relations with that God-forsaken city! Does it really belong to Germany? I feel as if I were to write an opera for Asia Minor.
Richard Wagner
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Volume 1, ed. Altmann/Hull (London: Dent, 1927), No. 99