Dear Sir,
I take the liberty of enquiring whether you might be inclined to design the costumes, and superintend the task of making them, for the festival performances of my four-part stage festival “The Ring of the Nibelung” which I am planning to present in the summer of 1876.
To give you some provisional idea as to the nature of the task, I am sending you a copy of the dramatic poem, together with a number of pamphlets relating to its realization. You will see at once that it was my awareness of the difficulties involved here which persuaded me to look around for a distinguished artist with particular experience in the relevant area.
I believe I am more than justified in regarding the task I have set you as a field that is fertile in inventive possibilities. For basically what I require is nothing less than a characteristic portrait made up of individual figures and depicting with strikingly vivid detail personal events from a period of culture not only remote from our own experience but having no association with any known experience. You will soon discover that you have to ignore completely the sort of picture which, following the example of Cornelius, Schnorr & others, artists have tried to put forward in portraying the characters of the medieval Lay of the Nibelungs. At the same time, it will be clear to anyone who has concerned himself of late with attempts to portray the more specifically Norse myths that the artists concerned have merely had recourse to classical antiquity, which they have modified in a way which they deemed to be typically Nordic. Passing references to the costumes of the Germanic peoples in Roman authors who came into contact with these nations do not appear to have received the attention they merit. In my own opinion, the artist who wishes to take up the subject I offer him and make it his own will find a unique field open to him in terms not only of intelligent compilation but also his own inventiveness; and I could wish for nothing more than to know that you, my very dear Sir, had made this task your own.
I would entreat you to let me know your kind decision, and to accept the protestations of especial regard with which I have the honour to be
Your devoted servant,
Richard Wagner.
Source: Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, trans. and ed. Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (W. W. Norton & Company, 1988), No. 427