My most gracious King,
Allow me to report in brief today how things stand with regard to the performance of the “Mastersingers” which you were previously kind enough to command. Since your theatre intendancy has not yet succeeded, in the only way open to it, in attracting a suitable interpreter for the principal role of Walther - a role that is as important to me as it is to you, my august and enlightened friend! - and since it is quite impossible for me to entrust so aristocratic, ardent and poetic a figure to such a thoroughly incompetent singer as Vogl, the local tenor, and since, finally, the time is now upon us when we must reach a final decision, I am bound to say that I consider a performance of my work to be out of the question this spring, and, instead, must advise the intendant to seek your kind permission to postpone it until next autumn.
My most gracious benefactor would be right to chide me for insincerity if this insincerity were to concern my innermost frame of mind - the source of my creativity. I shall not conceal from you, therefore, that my misplaced hopes of finding a favourable incentive for renewed creative activity in a successful presentation of my latest work have had a deeply unsettling and depressing effect upon my frame of mind. But I pray that what I have admitted to you here, simply out of my desire for sincerity and because of your exalted concern, may not appear to you an invitation to become involved in extraordinary measures designed to allow an undertaking to go ahead which - it seems to me - should now be abandoned. Far be it from me to expect sacrifices of you which must appear disproportionate to your royal sensitivities. All I wanted to do was describe this new source of sadness that weighs on the mind of your friend, and I ask most graciously for your kind indulgence, should you discover that I have not been wholly successful in resisting the effects of my sorrow.
It is with the most heartfelt concern that I seize upon what few scraps of news that still reach me concerning the health of my beloved friend and lord: I pray that they may always give me cause to be grateful!
In the holiest loyalty and love for my most exalted friend, I remain until death
Eternally and uniquely yours,
Richard Wagner
Source: Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, trans. and ed. Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (W. W. Norton & Company, 1988), No. 366