Dear Muzius!
I call this an adventure! I have just heard the Tannhäuser Overture and experienced a stirring homage. What do you say to that! Listen, and you will hear about a real magic of Fate.
Last night I was not able to close my eyes until Basel, and I arrived there quite exhausted at four o'clock in the morning, spending one and a half hours in the restaurant room until the departure of the omnibus for the train. Finally I was overwhelmed by a deathlike sleep and I stretched out on the bench. When I awoke, the omnibus and express train had already left a good half-hour before. Nobody had noticed me or called me, and now there was nothing left to me but to take a final nap in "The Stork" and leave next morning around ten o'clock by another train, by which I was to arrive in Strassburg about three o'clock in the afternoon, thus giving up, of course, the continuation of my trip to Paris.
While pondering about my fate and musing about the consequences of not arriving in Paris on Friday, I started out to take a good look at the cathedral again and to make straight for the theater after having no more than read the title of some presumably silly French play on the large poster. I liked the very pretty theater, got a floor ticket in a front row near the orchestra; there the enclosed program was handed to me and almost in a daze I read "Tannhäuser"! Good heavens, what is this? Looking closer, I saw that it was the overture which was to be offered to the public as a special item. I felt very queer. Meanwhile some of the musicians who know me from Zürich had discovered me, especially the good Dresden tympanist Hahnemann, your former admirer. Like wildfire, of course, it spread through the orchestra that I was there; the conductor, a clever young Frenchman, quickly had himself introduced to me at my seat before he started. Beaming with delight, the whole orchestra was looking at me. Now they began playing and, to my greatest surprise, I heard a full-sized orchestra excellently prepared, the tempi quite correct in the main, everything clearly and well executed.
My God, how mightily I was carried away by hearing something performed of my works, actually without my doing and without any consideration of me. And nothing else than the Tannhäuser Overture! I sat there in an indescribable inner excitement. Unfortunately I was strongly observed by the public, which had learned about my being present, but I didn't realize it and burst into a grateful flood of tears. There I sat and amidst the turmoil of the instruments the grave expiating Pilgrims' Chorus met my ear. At the end, during the mighty applause of the audience, which didn't realize how it happened, the conductor and the whole orchestra turned around to me and clapping their hands cried out to me to rise and express thanks, whereupon I left the theater immediately. Outside in the corridor several gentlemen from the audience welcomed me right away, among them an architect Weiher, whose name you should remember. My music director was in a condition of delight, and revelled in his experience of this evening.
Well, I went home and here I am writing you this story which is nice enough to be related to the neighbors. I don't deny that that strange incident has deeply stirred me. With hot tears I felt that laurels were destined for me. Well, I hadn't looked for them!
Tomorrow at eleven o'clock I am to continue to Paris, when I shall probably be in a state of anger and annoyance only, as a counterbalance to that nice freak of destiny.
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner: The Burrell Collection, ed. John N. Burk (Macmillan, 1950), No. 170