My most gracious and revered lord and friend,
- Oh! torment of love! -
How painfully I suffered at the thought that, on the strength of superficial considerations, my beloved King had felt obliged to remain away from this year’s opening performances of “Parsifal”; for I strove with all my might not to give serious credence to the assumption that any real indisposition might have led him to take this decision. If I have to believe otherwise, how much more inconsolable must I then be! What are Parsifal and all the Grail’s wonders, what power do they have in the face of such suffering from which I must needs be aloof and to whose relief I can contribute nothing!
There is almost nothing more for me to tell my supremely beloved lord except to express my anguish at his suffering, since I cannot offset that suffering by recourse to any self-ingratiating doubt. If I could believe that it was the King who - through the laws imposed by His Majesty’s dignity - felt bound by the force of that dignity, I might rail against fate, and suffer and sigh: but if I am forced to admit that it was the man, the most precious of all men, on whom envious nature imposed her constraints, then I shall for ever remain inconsolable. Now I can only wish, I can do nothing but wish: oh, if only I were a magician! -
What shall I tell you about these festive days in Bayreuth that shall seem worthy of being retailed to so exalted a patient? The work was a success, - that much I am bound to say to the honour of the performers. The most touching part about it for me was the splendid enthusiasm of all the participants — from the first to the last: although I have noticed this sort of thing with pleasure before, it seemed on this occasion as though everything was so much more intense. I was often tired and weary when I arrived for one of our performances which followed each other in such rapid succession, and was on the point of commiserating with my singers or musicians on the unremitting strain, but they met me with cries of jubilation, assuring me that their only cause for regret was the inevitable prospect of the end of the festival and their return to the ordinary theatrical and musical round. Many of them were genuinely inconsolable at the end: Fräulein Malten, who had had to leave us on the 15th of August, came back especially from Dresden for the final performance, at which Frau Materna was singing, in order at least to be able to be present as one of the audience. All of them assured me they had stipulated that their managements agree to their appearing only in my own operas for the period immediately after their return. - Theatre managers, amazed at our uncommonly accurate routine, asked me who was in charge, to which I replied by way of a joke that anarchy reigned and that everyone did as he wanted: but since everyone wanted the same thing that I did, everything was always in perfect accord with my own intentions. And that, indeed, is how it was. -
As for the success of the individual singers in solving such great and entirely new tasks, it was a cause for regret that I was too exhausted by the rehearsals to be able, in my resulting poor state of health, to take them through their parts again after each performance. Such rehearsals are really intended to correct points of detail, and there was no one more ready to take part than my singers themselves: they begged me to hold them, but I had to refuse. Yet even the few corrections that I did undertake, more especially with Kundry and Parsifal in the long and crucial scene in the second act, bore excellent fruit: visitors to the festival who had attended the opening performances and who then returned for the final ones were amazed at the progress they were able to note. The good thing here was that the two performers of “Kundry” (Frau Materna and Fräulein Malten), in addition to the singers of “Parsifal” (Herr Winkelmann and Herr Gudehus), were more or less comparable in excellence: the only advantage which Materna and Winkelmann had was that they remained here the whole time and were thus able to gain more practice in performing their parts. - Next to Scaria, the normally outstanding Siehr had a hard fight on his hands as “Gurnemanz”: the latter is perhaps the more accurate vocally and musically, and his acting is certainly most dignified, whereas Scaria’s performance was marked throughout by a certain naïveté which won him the hearts of his audience. The scene with Klingsor’s enchanted flowers was utterly unsurpassable, and probably the most masterly piece of direction in terms of music and staging that has ever come my way: it had been a question here of assembling six so-called leading sopranos with equally light, high voices, and of choosing a further twenty-four young leading chorus members with equally good voices and charming appearances. Thanks to the zeal of our admirable conductor, Kapellmeister Levi, whose enthusiasm I cannot praise highly enough, this was a total success: I had singers from five Court Theatres who normally sing Elisabeth, Elsa, Sieglinde and even Brünnhilde (Frl. Andre from Brunswick). I cannot begin to describe these ladies’ engaging enthusiasm; the admirable Porges had played a significant part in rehearsing them, too. If I may mention one major difficulty in performing “Parsifal” in Munich in the event of its being presented to my exalted benefactor there, then I am bound to recognize that it lies in the impossibility of your giving an equally good performance of this scene, unless you succeed in reassembling the same ensemble as before. -
The costumes gave us a good deal of extra work, since the flowermaidens in particular had been designed very sketchily by Joukowsky and had to be almost entirely rethought when it came to running them up: we succeeded in investing them with the most perfect naïveté: they really were flowers, just like the giant blooms in the garden itself: the finishing touch consisted simply in their breaking off some of the flowers and placing them on their heads like children, which produced an indescribably charming effect. - The sets were more successful than anything I had previously experienced: in making them the Brothers Bruckner were fully initiated as artists. However, the late Brandt had incomprehensibly miscalculated the amount of time required for the moving transformations to pass the width of the stage, since they required as much music again as I had already allowed for it; although we were able to get by here by repeating the music, the whole process became so tiresomely distended as to be totally out of keeping with the magical character I had intended. It has already been decided that at future performances the first transformation will be reduced by half, and the second (in the third act), which was not used at all on this occasion, will only be hinted at, and will then lead immediately into the rocky gateway which, shrouded in darkness until that moment, will then split open to lead at once into the Temple of the Grail. -
May my most gracious lord and friend forgive me for this somewhat bungling report with which I really only wanted to give proof of my goodwill, and, in addition to expressing my most painful regret at so deeply distressing a reason for my exalted friend’s absence from a festival which owes its existence to him alone, to contribute as best I may to his relaxation of mind. If aught can compare to my pain, it can be only the gratitude which fulfils and inspires me whenever I recall the immeasurable kindness which my most dearly beloved benefactor has shown to me. All I have asked for, nay, all I have wished for by way of the merest suggestion was granted me with more than kingly grace: the resultant assistance was utterly decisive, just as it was executed by those entrusted with your sovereign command with exemplary zeal and an excellence which can never be adequately acknowledged.
Thus may my gratitude mingle with my pain, that it may be dedicated to my reverend lord as a tragic bloom from the garden of life of the Holy Grail: and thus may I perish at your feet in undying love,
Eternally and for ever your own,
Richard Wagner
Source: Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, trans. and ed. Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (W. W. Norton & Company, 1988), No. 497