[...] Since I discover that you intend performing Lohengrin as early as 28 August, I shall make haste not to delay any longer sending you the enclosed, and shall reserve the right to return to any outstanding points in a later letter.
My first consideration in drawing up the enclosed notes was to express my thoughts on the staging and scenery. The sketches which I have drawn for this purpose will amuse you greatly: I number them among the most successful creations of my genius; where my technique has let me down, you will be able to deduce my intentions from the accompanying literary explanation. The foliage caused me insuperable difficulties, and if every artist sweats as much blood as I did in trying to achieve a sense of perspective, no one could ever call painting an easy profession. - I should add that in my remarks I have persistently referred to the full score, where the stage action has been indicated in far greater detail and with greater precision than in the libretto, so that it appears there in accord with the music. The producer must therefore work in the closest possible consultation with the score - perhaps using a piano reduction of the same.
I have similarly drawn up for you a few remarks concerning the orchestra.
First and foremost, however, I have a great favour to ask of you:
Give the opera as it stands, without cuts!
There is only one cut which I myself would suggest, and indeed I would insist that the passage indicated be omitted, namely the second half of Lohengrin’s narration in the great closing scene of the third act. After Lohengrin’s words:
“his knight am I and Lohengrin my - name”
a whole 56 bars should be cut, up to:
“where all of you with God did see me - land”
in other words: - “name” instead of: “land”. -
I have often gone through the whole thing on my own, and become convinced that this second section of the narration is bound to produce something of an anticlimax. This passage should therefore also be removed at once from the libretti.
[...]
Source: Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, trans. and ed. Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (W. W. Norton & Company, 1988), No. 112