Dear Heine,
When I wrote my Flying Dutchman, it was in the firm conviction that I could not write otherwise than I did write. The raw material — already long known to me from the work of your namesake — acquired for me on my famous sea-voyage, and amid the Norwegian crags, a quite peculiar colour and individuality, gloomy no doubt, but borrowed from the whispers of the Nature to which we all belong, and not from the speculations of a gloom-sick enthusiast. But the vast wild ocean, with its broadcast fables, is an element that does not willingly and obediently permit itself to be polished down to fit a modern opera; and the whole sea-blown Saga of the Flying Dutchman — which now seized my fancy so completely that it clamoured to me for artistic reproduction — appeared to need an utterly dreadful maiming and mutilation, if it were to be forced to meet the requirements of a modern opera-text, with its piquant suspenses and surprises. I therefore preferred to modify the material which lay to my hand of itself, in no way other than the progress of a dramatic plot requires, but to leave the full fragrance of the old tale to spread itself undisturbed over the whole. Thus only did I believe that I could chain the audience to that rare mood in which — if only gifted with but a modicum of poetry — one even wins affection for the gloomiest of Sagas. It was thus, too, that I fared in the creation of my music: in order to attain my object, I needed not to look around on my left hand and my right, nor to make the slightest concession to modern taste; for otherwise I should have acted not only inartistically, but also unwisely. The modern division into Arias, Duets, Finales, and so on, I had at once to give up; and in their stead narrate the Saga in one breath, just as should be done in a good poem. In this wise I brought forth an opera of which, now that it has been performed, I cannot conceive how it could have pleased. For in its every external feature it is so completely unlike that which one now calls opera, that I see indeed how much I demanded of the public, namely, that they should with one blow dissever themselves from all that which had hitherto entertained and appealed to them in the theatre. Yet that this opera, not only in Dresden, but especially in Cassel and in Riga, has gained for itself so many friends, and even won the favour of the larger public, appears to me a finger-sign pointing to show us that we must only write just as the poetic sense inborn in our German hearts dictates, never making the least concession to foreign modes, and simply choosing out our stuff and handling it as it appeals to ourselves, in order to be surest to win the pleasure of our fellow-countrymen. In this way may we win for ourselves once more a German School of Original Opera; and all who despair of this, and import foreign models, may take an example from this Dutchman, which certainly is so conceived as never a Frenchman nor Italian would have dreamt of conceiving it.
Your
Richard Wagner.
Source: Richard Wagner's Letters to His Dresden Friends, Theodor Uhlig, Wilhelm Fischer, and Ferdinand Heine, trans. J. S. Shedlock (Scribner & Welford, 1890), No. 159