[...] You will recall that in Montmorency I gave you a letter to be forwarded to Liszt: as a direct result of that letter - as I discovered much later - Liszt had the score of the opera sent to him from Dresden, and proceeded to perform the same. The first performance took place on the 28th of August: - I sent Karl Ritter to Weimar in order for him to report back to me all that happened. Karl had heard me play it - the opera, I mean - on the piano, and the performance was not to his liking, chiefly on account of the slovenliness and stiffness of the performers. Apart from that, everything possible is said to have been done, and on the whole it left a most striking impression. But you know me well enough by now to realize that I no longer expect any results either from this or from similar efforts made on behalf of our cause in general or of me in particular. But since I am still alive, and since, with the best will in the world, I can live only in the here and now, I must needs do something that accords with my temperament. I am genuinely thinking of setting Siegfried to music, only I cannot reconcile myself with the idea of trusting to luck and of having the work performed by the very first theatre that comes along: on the contrary, I am toying with the boldest of plans, which it will require no less a sum than 10,000 thalers to bring out. According to this plan of mine, I would have a theatre erected here on the spot, made of planks, and have the most suitable singers join me here, and arrange everything necessary for this one special occasion, so that I could be certain of an outstanding performance of the opera. I would then send out invitations far and wide to all who were interested in my works, ensure that the auditorium was decently filled, and give three performances - free, of course - one after the other in the space of a week, after which the theatre would then be demolished and the whole affair would be over and done with. Only something of this nature can still appeal to me. I shall receive the sum when Karl Ritter’s uncle dies.
Source: Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, trans. and ed. Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (W. W. Norton & Company, 1988), No. 116