Your Excellency,
Wearisome as my letters must be, I must regrettably inflict yet another written communication upon you.
My position vis-à-vis the opera at the Royal Court Theatre has inevitably caused me repeated distress on more than one occasion, and I have frequently felt how impossible it was for me to continue to discharge the duties I deemed necessary, given the prevailing circumstances and the rivalry felt by my various colleagues all of whom enjoy the same rights as I do; the result of all this is that I have often felt discouraged and seen my native enthusiasm undermined; - in moods such as these I have often considered in what way I might extricate myself from all responsibility for a business which several parties believe me to be actively involved in, in consequence of which I am now exposed to opinions and attacks which affect me the more keenly, the greater my influence is mistakenly thought to be.
That my own voice carries little weight of authority is something of which Herr Dr Gutzkow, among others, is no doubt fully aware: all the more shameful, therefore, is the course of action which he is currently embarked upon. I shall begin by drawing Your Excellency’s attention to the Dresden theatre reports which have recently appeared in the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung. - If, in itself, it was humiliating to think that a man who until very recently was a mere journalist and who has subsequently taken a superficial interest in the theatre ( - except in the case of the latter’s chronique scandaleuse, where his interest has been far from superficial - ), but who has yet to give any real proof that he knows the first thing about the subject - to think that such a man was suddenly entrusted with supreme technical and almost administrative control over an institution which had managed in the past to achieve splendid things without him, I nevertheless had no reason to register any personal complaints as far as the interests of the opera were concerned, as long as I was able to assume that his instructions were confined in the first instance to the field of spoken drama. Although I noticed in what a short space of time this man had succeeded in bringing down upon himself the ridicule and contempt of the entire company, thanks to his pretentious behaviour and his tasteless instructions - all of which betrayed the most extreme ignorance - , I could no longer remain indifferent when I discovered that this same man was to be made responsible for the administration of the opera. It was this discovery that prompted me to avoid Your Excellency at the beginning of this year: I have never denied that I did so out of annoyance. What has come to light in the mean time is well known to Your Excellency: Herr Gutzkow’s achievement, so to speak, was The Queen’s Musketeers - mine: Iphigenia in Aulis. - But this dramatist’s meddling in the affairs of the opera finally reached a peak of what I can only call the most shameless vexatiousness when his reports first started to appear in the above-mentioned newspaper; I trust he will not take it into his head to deny that he is the author of these reports, since I should have no difficulty in proving the contrary. Your Excellency will now see the man for what he is and as he has long since appeared most plainly to people who knew him previously, namely a newspaper hack and a creator of cliques who, in the present instance, is quite clearly concerned not for the welfare of our opera but for extending his own sphere of power by seeking to have members of his clique appointed to positions within the opera. -[...]
This evil genius, whose intrigues and calumnies are destroying the mutual trust which we need if we are to work together, is leading our institution towards the brink of certain moral collapse; no one is more concerned about this than I, who strives openly, warmly and enthusiastically to achieve the highest goal and yet who so often has cause to regret the manner in which he is misunderstood and rewarded only with a lack of trust. The pain that I feel upon seeing myself condemned in such circumstances to ever increasing disgust and hence to a state of complete inaction, and thus to stand by while the expectations which were once placed in me and in my abilities are increasingly unfulfilled - this pain is so great and so genuine that, if only my present circumstances were somewhat happier, I should without doubt have asked His Majesty to relieve me of my official duties. [...]
Source: Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, trans. and ed. Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (W. W. Norton & Company, 1988), No. 77