Dear Friend Liszt!
[...] Not a theatre in the world has as yet thought well to produce my opera Tannhäuser, brought out four years ago. You had to come from the ends of the earth first, to settle for a time at the seat of a little Court Theatre, and forthwith you set to work to help your much-tried friend! You did not say much or make much ado, but applied yourself to the unaccustomed work and rehearsed my opera. [...]
But you did not want only to benefit my work, you wanted to benefit me also. You knew that I, in my present situation, was thrown back upon myself—a rather lonely, rather forsaken man. You wanted to get me friends. [...]
Dear friend, at this moment of all moments by so doing, you have raised my spirits like magic [...] for the very same week that Tannhäuser was performed in Weimar I suffered such vile affronts from my Intendant here, that for several days I strove with myself as to whether I could any longer bear to endure such degrading treatment, for the sake of the bit of bread my official position gives me, and whether I should not rather drop art, earn my bread as a day labourer, and so escape further exposure to the malicious ignorance of a despot. [...]
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Vol. 1, selected and ed. Wilhelm Altmann, trans. M. M. Bozman (J. M. Dent & Sons, 1927), No. 146