Dearest Luise,
A brief word in answer to your question! - Do me a favour, and the next time that such disastrous restlessness (more especially on the part of the Sunday audience) breaks out at the end, withdraw deep into your box, close your eyes, and simply follow the words of H. Sachs’s closing address. If you then find that his words express, in a meaningful way, the real and more serious sense of the whole (a sense which only now emerges), and if, at the moment when the theme of the Nuremberg Mastersingers is directly wedded to that of Walther’s Prize Song, you hear this wider significance borne in upon your feelings as an agreeable play of melody, tell me then what you would think of me if, simply as a favour, I were to sacrifice this moment of beauty to the rudeness of a part of the audience (which after all forces itself upon me uninvited) - a moment, moreover, which I offer as a gift to those whom I have invited. It is these latter for whom my work is solely intended and who ought therefore to do what they can to retain the beauty of this moment undefiled. After all, if the King of Saxony returned in his coat to applaud, it may of course be that his applause was intended for Kapellmeister Rietz, and perhaps also Mitterwurzer, who similarly claims this honour for himself; I believe that the impulse which persuaded him to show his support must have received its strongest impetus from Sachs’s final address; for it is at people such as him that this address is directed. Simply leave those who are not called upon in this way to elbow their way to the exit: it happens all the time; at the best concert establishments the audience grows restless at the end of a Beethoven symphony: if you go to the theatre, you must know in advance that, according to the majority, you will end up among the rabble. It is the task of those who are more refined and better educated to maintain and protect what is good and genuine in the face of such bad habits. Instead of appealing to me, you should try to persuade some spirited and sensible person to take audiences to task publicly for their rudeness, and make it clear to them what they are ruining and losing. -
I was genuinely pleased by everything you all had to tell me, rest assured of that; and, of course, it pleases me no less to discover that my work was at least given in such a way that it could not fail to make a fine impression.
Further reports would be most welcome to me, since I am certainly not over-provided with them otherwise. If the theatre administrators were better educated and had more sense of honour, I should no doubt have received news from them as well: but people do not seem to know this any longer.
Fare you well, dearest Luise! Sincere good wishes to you and your family!
Yours,
Richard.
Source: Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, trans. and ed. Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (W. W. Norton & Company, 1988), No. 374