After one single stroke of good fortune which speedily brought me fame and a position of great importance for the present needs of Germany, my good angel seems suddenly to have folded his wings. After my first appearance in Dresden I have not again been able to make any decisive advance. I need a great city, the greatest city in Germany, to give force to my Dresden success. But Berlin seems to exist simply to break my power. On the face of it, it was too daring to appear before a great public, and one which could know nothing of me beforehand, with a work like my Flying Dutchman and my first appearance in Berlin ought most decidedly to have been with Rienzi. But now that the Flying Dutchman has been accorded a tolerably effective debut (in the ordinary playhouse, too, which is an unfavourable place for my music), the Berlin Intendant, von Kistner, must needs spoil such impression as I had succeeded in making, by entirely omitting the opera from the repertoire in obedience to sheer hidebound routine. So the chances of this opera of mine are simply wrecked from the start and its further dissemination is not to be thought of for the present. And how hard I am working now to smooth the way for Rienzi in Berlin! Last summer Meyerbeer was present at the twentieth performance of this opera, and had a further opportunity of convincing himself of its success, in that the author was called before the curtain enthusiastically after each of the five acts (yes, and twice after the fourth), and he then promised me, heart and soul, to set about getting this opera performed to a Berlin audience at the first possible moment. I still do not doubt the honesty of his intentions towards me.
But the still unsurmounted obstacle in the way of the production of my opera, the lack of a leading tenor, is enough to make me despair altogether. Furthermore, this difficulty of getting my works accepted elsewhere is doubled by the present condition of criticism in Dresden. Dresden is a place which a century of dead routine has reduced to complete critical insignificance. Weber found Italian opera flourishing here, an admired exotic growth. He had to create a German opera out of nothing and this under the most hampering conditions in the world, for the Court was totally unsympathetic. Encouraged by the rich material to hand here, I have now set myself the glorious task of carrying on Weber's work, that is to say, of helping to emancipate Dresden musically, of smiting the Philistines hip and thigh, of ennobling the public taste here and of thereby making its voice one to be considered. What is the first obstacle I meet? Jealousy!! I have happily overcome the evil machinations of this jealousy as far as it opposed my practical efficacy, but just where I cannot honourably join issue in the field of criticism, it is waxing luxuriantly. What is criticism in such a town as Dresden? We have only one journal and only one correspondent for foreign papers. Your old acquaintance Schladebach may have his uses, but as far as I am concerned he is the blind slave of the workings of a murderous jealousy, with the result that outside Saxony my activities are either grossly misrepresented in the press or - what is almost worse - my successes go entirely unremarked. For instance, when I came here I lighted on Marschner's Hans Heiling, the score of which had been accepted for production ten years back and still reposed peacefully on the library shelf. I got it out and produced it. Again, I heard that Marschner had finished a new opera, Adolf von Nassau. I insisted upon getting this work performed for the first time here, no little to the surprise of the composer who would sooner have expected the Dresden Theatre to fall to the ground than to come to such a decision. Again, a big festival of Men's Choirs was to be held. My predecessors laid the lead and brought off a really magnificent performance at the Church of Our Lady here. Again, the orchestra itself was rotten with numberless abuses, but after tremendous battles I got the necessary reinforcements, a better personnel, an increased number of strings, etc. In spite of the strong disapproval of the Court and Intendant I put through the removal of Weber's ashes to Dresden; and the reburial, with accompanying solemnities worthy of the occasion, was my work too.
Did you read anything about all this in the columns of "News from Dresden"? Have you ever seen the fact mentioned that, since its first performance here, my Rienzi has been the sole opera here to draw a full house always, even under unfavourable external conditions; or that the King of Prussia attended the twenty-fifth performance, displaying marked and well-attested interest? No, of course you have not, and yet things of this kind do not as a rule pass without comment. I know quite well that a newspaper report cannot make a bad work of a good one or a good one of a bad, but the papers can act as a hindrance and a drag and they can dishearten a man. I still believe it of the greatest importance to the whole future of our dramatic music for great work to arise in the heart of Germany and be disseminated through the land, and yet I tell you it is with pain I confess to having sometimes looked involuntarily towards Paris again, when here such a slough clogs my every step. Can it really be, after all, that Germany is only to be worked upon through Paris? When I set my mind on Paris I feel miserable and restless, as if I were planning to betray my own dear mother. It's a fine thing, is it not, for a man to be driven to such traitorous thoughts? Help me to blot them out forever!
I am sending you herewith my Tannhäuser as he loves and lives - a German from head to toe. Kindly accept him as a present. May he be able to win me the hearts of my German fellow-countrymen in far greater numbers than, up to now, my earlier works have succeeded in doing! Either this is good work, or I shall never do good work. It put a real spell upon me. However and wherever I touched my subject the flame leaped and glowed in me. In spite of long interruptions to my work, when I returned to it I always found myself back in the twinkling of an eye in the characteristic atmosphere which enchanted me upon my first conception of it. At the end of this month I go to Marienbad and in August return to Dresden to rehearse Tannhäuser. Pianoforte arrangements, etc., are all ready prepared, so I shall be quite free and unencumbered from the day after the first performance. I had it in mind to idle away a year afterwards, that is to say, to go through my library from end to end without creating anything, but unfortunately I already feel a strong urge to do so, as a new subject [Lohengrin] has captured me completely. However, I mean to restrain myself forcibly, firstly because there are still things I would like to learn, and secondly because I am convinced that if a dramatic work is to have intense significance and originality it must come as the result of a definite upward step, a real cultural advance in the life of its composer. Such a step, such a new period is not to be marked off every half-year; it takes several years to produce this stored ripeness. Only money-grubbers can be content to produce even one inferior piece of work - but I shall never make any money, to that I am now resigned.
Richard Wagner
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Volume 1, ed. Altmann/Hull (London: Dent, 1927), No. 113