Most honoured friend,
To my great regret I have been forced to gather from the sum total of complaints made by our festival visitors that, although its outstanding artistic success has assured us the permanent footing that we desired, the irredeemable shortcomings in the town’s public services threaten to destroy this hope entirely. Although you, most honoured friend, were at pains to see that our visitors were well looked after, their complaints concerning poor accommodation and food, more especially at the three leading hotels, can no longer be ignored. I am told that at the Hotel Sonne a decent piece of meat is not to be had on the fixed-price menu at 7 marks. Since the prevailing bad weather means that the theatre restaurant cannot be patronized, the result is a degree of inconvenience for our visitors which, if taken advantage of by unsympathetic journalists, might well be calculated to bring Bayreuth into fundamental disrepute as a festival town. My own labours have been crowned by artistic success, but if these same labours are insufficient to allow me to continue the festival on an annual footing, I should have cause for the deepest regret that the townspeople’s public spirit was to blame. That is why I am now writing to you with the humble request that you do all that it is permitted a man in your privileged position to do in order to put an end to the potentially dangerous shortcomings that I have described to you here.
In constant gratitude and respect, I am,
Your obedient servant,
Richard Wagner
Source: Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, trans. and ed. Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (W. W. Norton & Company, 1988), No. 496