[...] A glance at our theatre has shown me again plainly what is necessary if my art is to take root and not pass away like an ephemera, totally misunderstood. I need a theatre such as I alone can establish. It is not possible for my work to root in a theatre where our operatic nonsense—even the classical included—is given, and where everything, presentation, interpretation and aim, radically and directly contravene what I demand for my work. Place the Court theatres in Vienna or Berlin at my disposal, make me master of what I need, and still I cannot get it right—and should frantic exertions succeed in producing the right thing once, the whole scheme would collapse like a house of cards the next day, if The Prophet, or even The Magic Flute or Fidelio itself were given. I cannot tolerate the neighbourhood of "Opera" where my "Music-Drama" is to be planted. Accordingly, I see more clearly than ever that I need a theatre of my own which, from the first I can conduct on different lines. I can only have this in one of three cities: Paris, Vienna, Berlin; for only in a great city is there sufficient public for what must at first be regarded as a novelty. As it is too late for me to turn Frenchman, the two German capitals only are open to me. Although Vienna is very musical, I still consider Berlin—especially as you have described it to me recently—more important and more useful. [...]
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Vol. 2, selected and ed. Wilhelm Altmann, trans. M. M. Bozman (J. M. Dent & Sons, 1927), No. 508