My very dear Cecilie,
At risk of incurring your bitter reproaches, I have delayed writing until now so that I could write a full report of my activities, & not merely a few brief words: as God is my witness, today - the 13th July 1843 - is the first opportunity I have had of doing so since I last saw Eduard. Letters of the sort that I am writing to you now are ones I constantly defer starting, unless I have an entire morning at my disposal: - well then! Today is the first morning I can call my own in the sense I have outlined. I have been given four weeks’ leave of absence by my intendant, & I dedicate the first day of it to this long delayed letter to you. - I have been so overwhelmed by work & other commitments during the last 2 months that I have come to look on my present leave as just what the doctor ordered, so that I can recover from all my physical & mental exertions. Reissiger went off on holiday in the middle of May, leaving me practically on my own to carry out all the duties, both in church & in the theatre, in addition to which I received a commission from the King to write a commemorative hymn for the unveiling of the memorial to King Friedrich August; Mendelssohn was also commissioned to write a piece: overall control of the performance, which took place in the Zwinger, was entrusted to me: I assembled a choir of 250 singers from local choral societies, & made a great name for myself, in that it was universally agreed that my own piece, which was straightforward & uplifting, knocked Mendelssohn’s over-elaborate & artificial composition into a cocked hat. I also received a gold snuff-box worth about 100 thalers from the King as a “souvenir”. Scarcely had I recovered from all this when I had to make a start on a short oratorio which I had promised to write for the great Festival of Male Voice Choirs here in Dresden; in spite of all my other heavy commitments, I had 2 weeks to produce a major, serious work, for which I also had to write the words: my nerves by then were so much on edge that I often just sat & cried for fifteen minutes on end. I then had to rehearse my piece, which had initially had to be postponed & which in the end was only just completed in time, & my limbs have still not recovered from the after-effects of these exertions: as director of the local choral society, I additionally had to conduct all their remaining rehearsals. But the success of the performance has amply rewarded me: it was a splendid festival in the true sense of the word, especially the performance in the Frauenkirche. Picture to yourself a choir of 1200 men’s voices, all perfectly rehearsed, on a platform occupying almost the entire nave of the church, & behind them an orchestra of 100 players, & you can imagine the impression it must have had! There has never been anything like it in any other church. On this day, too, I carried off the prize; my composition, entitled “The Love-Feast of the Apostles”, included a passage depicting the descent of the Holy Ghost, which held everyone spellbound. The singers, who had flocked to Dresden from every part of Saxony, greeted me afterwards with shouts of vivat! & hurrah whenever they caught sight of me; there was no end to the general rejoicing. - Things in general have started to gather pace here: my Dutchman was given in Cassel & Riga at almost the same time & to the most brilliant acclaim: what is particularly remarkable is the way in which Spohr has been won over. I am currently in the process of revising Rienzi so as to make it suitable for performing on a single evening; & then I think it will be the turn of this one, too. I have still not been able to write a line of my new work. -
[...]
I shall not write to dear old Kietz today! I have prattled on for long enough to you, & left myself nothing else to tell him; would you be so kind as to pass on all my news to him & Anders? To be honest, my delay in writing is largely the result of a strange sense of dejection which fell upon me like a lead weight at the news of Lehrs’ death. For a whole week after receiving the news, my head & my entire being felt dull & expressionless: his death lay on me like some calamity, so that I was scarcely able to lift my head. When I think that I stood by - powerlessly - & watched this poor dear friend of ours slowly being destroyed before my very eyes by the fate which pursues all that is noble & undemanding! - Children! Children! In what light did I then see that Paris of yours, that great den of assassins where those of us who are motivated by simple & straightforward ambitions are hounded to death, silently & unobserved! [...]
Source: Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, trans. and ed. Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (W. W. Norton & Company, 1988), No. 58