My very dear Sir,
I was delighted to receive your news, and cannot refrain from thanking you for it.
I hope you will see to it that my works are performed in “English”: only in this way can they be intimately understood by an English-speaking audience. We are hoping that they will be so performed in London.
We (that is, I and my family) were extremely interested to see the views of Melbourne which you sent me: since you were kind enough to offer to send us more, I can assure you that I should be only too delighted to receive them.
Please give my kind regards to Herr Lyster, and, however remote your part of the world may be, continue to be so well-disposed towards
Your most grateful servant
Richard Wagner
Source: Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, trans. and ed. Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (W. W. Norton & Company, 1988), No. 454