[...] I really have no illusions about my reputation as a poet, & I confess that it was only as a last resort that I adopted the expedient of writing my own libretti, since no decent texts were offered me. But it would now be totally impossible for me to set another’s text to music for the following reason: — It is not my practice to choose a subject at random, to versify it & then think of suitable music to write for it; - if I were to proceed in that way I should be exposed to the difficulty of having to work myself up to a pitch of enthusiasm on two separate occasions, something which is impossible. No, my method of production is different from that: - in the first place I am attracted only by those subjects which reveal themselves to me not only as poetically but, at the same time, as musically significant. And so, even before I set about writing a single line of the text or drafting a scene, I am already thoroughly immersed in the musical aura of my new creation, I have the whole sound & all the characteristic motives in my head so that when the poem is finished & the scenes are arranged in their proper order the actual opera is already completed, & its detailed musical treatment is more a question of calm & reflective revision, the moment of actual creativity having already passed. But for this to be so, I must choose only subjects which are capable of an exclusively musical treatment: I would never, for example, choose a subject which a skilled playwright could just as well turn into a spoken drama. But as a musician I can choose subjects & invent situations & contrasts which must always remain outside the province of a dramatic poet who is writing for the theatre. This, however, is the point at which opera & drama part company, each of which calmly follows its own direction. If it is the task of today’s dramatic poet to elucidate & intellectualize the material interests of our age from a moralistic point of view, so it falls to the opera librettist and composer to conjure up the unique & characteristic aura of sanctity associated with poetry as it wafts across the centuries in the form of legends & tales from the dawn of history; for music offers us the means to forge links which the poet alone does not have at his command, at least when faced with today’s actors. This is the way to raise up opera to a higher plane & restore it to a level from which we ourselves have debased it by expecting composers to derive their inspiration from trivialities, intrigues & so on, which the modern writer of comedies & plays could far more successfully depict without the aid of music.
- For my next opera I have chosen the beautiful & highly characteristic legend of Tannhäuser, who lingered in the Venusberg & then journeyed to Rome in search of atonement; I have made a connection between this legend & the Wartburg song contest, in which Tannhäuser replaces Heinrich v. Ofterdingen; the result of this connection is a poem which is rich in dramatic life. - I think it will become clear to you when you get to know the subject that only a musician could have treated it adequately.
[...]
Source: Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, trans. and ed. Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (W. W. Norton & Company, 1988), No. 64