Most excellent friend Kietz,
I thank you 7,500 times for your two overture letters, which in any case made more enemies for me than the overture affair itself. I was only wondering why, after you had written me so conscientiously about the rehearsals, I had to wait so long after the performance to get further news from you. Before receiving the latter I had already read, to my greatest satisfaction, the following witty remark about my overture in the bulletin of the National:
"This composition" (I translate faithfully) "contained the noisy accompaniment of a nonexistent melody. Wagner certainly understands a great deal about harmony and instrumentation, but unfortunately Heaven has stubbornly denied him the gift of melody. No laws prohibit writing; certain laws in various countries prohibit only certain ideas: well, the laws of no country could have any objection to the performance of Wagner's works, since they contain no ideas whatever."
Herr Blanchard writes in the Gazette Musicale on the subject of Tannhäuser that the latter is a dissolute knight of the Middle Ages who subsisted on robbery and theft: without the description of the subject which he gives one cannot understand the overture, and that is bad, etc. My dearest friend Ernst Benedikt! When will you ever wake up? I can't really hold it against you for taking pleasure in the rehearsals, but your many worries and troubles with the performance were your just punishment. Let me assure you on my part that the news of Seghers' intention only put me in a bad humor, and that this bad humor disappeared only after I had made up my mind that fundamentally it didn't matter at all whether Paris liked the overture or not. Also I'm afraid that you have an exaggeratedly strong ear for the applause that took place and drew the wrong conclusion from it. But the most delightful part of it all is your description of the whole thing and the adventures you had in connection with it: I've told them to my friends here with great effect.
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner: The Burrell Collection, ed. John N. Burk (Macmillan, 1950), No. 100