My dear friend,
Please accept my warmest thanks for your kind letter, and at the same time my sincerest good wishes both to you and our enthusiastic Olga. -
The floods which caused you so many difficulties on your journey to Italy made my own return from there one of the most spectacular adventures of my life. I was stuck in Ticino at the foot of the Gotthart for a whole week. -
I have authorized the music-dealer Lucca in Milan to approach Frau Laussot with a view to the latter’s checking the editions of my operas. Please thank her most sincerely for her amicable readiness to assist me! -
There is another great service that she could render me. Karl Ritter, who is completely inaccessible to me, has in his safe-keeping (assuming he has not allowed them to go astray) two old - and in themselves relatively unimportant - manuscripts of mine, both of which are dramatic sketches. 1st The Saracen Woman (5 acts)
2nd Jesus of Nazareth.
I am very anxious to have these two things back, in manuscript or in a copy, since I am planning a complete edition of my literary & poetic works. Frau Laussot ought to be successful in helping me here. -
I shall be sending you a 2nd edition of “Opera & Drama” with a new preface within the next few days.
Yesterday I sent my publisher the manuscript of a new (and pretty desperate) brochure, “Judaism in Music”, which you should also receive in due course. -
Do you also want to know how I am? I am resolved never to set foot in Germany again. -
I should very much like to come to Italy. Perhaps I could even do some good there. I discovered that the Crown Princess of Italy was very interested in me, and wanted me to come to Florence to give a new impulse to regenerating musical taste which has grown so corrupt. It was the young princess’s governess who told me this in Munich. If you know this woman, or if you have access to her through others, tell her that I am ready to follow a serious summons to Florence.
You will gather from these disjointed sentences how deeply earnest is my present mood.
I’ll have nothing more to do with this world. A final attempt could be made possible only if the circumstances were sufficiently appealing. -
Once again: my sincere good wishes!
Remember with affection
Your loyally devoted friend
Richard Wagner
Source: Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, trans. and ed. Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (W. W. Norton & Company, 1988), No. 373