[...] Since you wish it I hasten, now that the third performance of my Flying Dutchman is over, to render you a concise account of the facts of its success.
I enclose a copy of the libretto from which you will see how entirely this opera differs from Rienzi in genre, and further, how unlike it is in all essentials to what this present-day public of ours expects the ordinary opera to be. You will find that I have allowed a primitive saga to tell itself, quite simply, without the addition, as is usually thought necessary nowadays, of anything "operatic" in the commonly accepted sense. The Frenchman who has worked up a sketch upon this plot (knowingly plagiarised from me) has quite destroyed the exquisite fragrance of the saga by introducing the kind of episodes common to all French operas of the day. I believe I have solved my problem by far simpler dramatic treatment, but cannot pretend to ignore the fact that it was a very daring thing to present our great public with something so foreign to their expectations. I have put in no pageantry, no noisily effective finale, etc. I had made up my mind to face the fact that it would take several performances to accustom the public to what I had to offer. I was so much the more joyfully surprised when a brilliant success was assured from the first performance and I found I had succeeded in winning my public forthwith. [...]
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Vol. 1, selected and ed. Wilhelm Altmann, trans. M. M. Bozman (J. M. Dent & Sons, 1927), No. 81