Address from April 3: Schönebergerstrasse 10.
The news from Paris leaves me speechless, dearest friend. First I felt like bursting into the laughter that definitely marks the beginning of lunacy. But now it seems to me rather that I must have been a lunatic to expect any other results. The rabble does not play hide-and-seek with me in Paris as it does elsewhere: it fulfilled its social mission with regard to you without masks, compulsion, or Germanic scruples. I don’t know how you feel, but the serenity of your mood after the first evening seemed to me to have undergone no change. Fundamentally the motives which lead to suicide and to taking up one’s life again are identical: extreme disgust and a surfeit of worldly things may lead equally to self-destruction or to the most complete self-indulgence.
Your poor wife! What must she have suffered! We have thought much about her and would gladly have expressed our sympathy, but where could we find a comforting or soothing word?
I had to spend a week at Karlsruhe, and I only heard yesterday through Countess Flemming, wife of the Prussian minister, that I had spent it to good effect. On such placid ground the least thing takes time to prepare, and Kalliwoda is acting in a cowardly, unenterprising way like the German he is. I hoped he would have done all the small amount of spade-work necessary so that I should have some ground on which to stand in demanding a reply. But until my arrival he had not even attempted to see the people concerned, but had on the contrary avoided opportunities of doing so. Yet this fellow is a thorough-going musician, clever and well-intentioned and a favourite with the Grand Duchess.
But I will spare you the futile details. Here, briefly, is the result: the Grand Duke agrees to the idea of a dramatic music festival (as I christened it for the sake of intelligibility) with or for Tristan and Isolde, under your direction of course. He will have the principal artists engaged beforehand according to your wishes. For Brangäne (if not for Isolde) Frau Boni is available: a beginner full of ambition and energy, with a wonderful organ and an unusually fine personality. I consider her capable of being trained; she is teachable. Then for Kurwenal there is Hauser, as satisfactory for the part as anyone in Germany: magnificent voice, has the freshness of youth, and is genuinely musical. Mark, don’t know; Tristan, probably Schnorr, who after all seems to me the least of all evils.
I imagine your stay in Paris will in no case be long. Do please go straight to Karlsruhe next and pay your respects at court, having announced your arrival beforehand through the Baden minister in Paris. I am counting entirely on the magnetic effect of your personality on the Grand Duchess, who is your fervent friend and admirer. On three mornings I had to play Tristan to her for nearly an hour each time, only Fräulein von Sternberg (her lady-in-waiting and a friend of mine) being present. She listened with rapt attention, following the poem the while. If that was all a Berlin pose, I’ll eat my hat! On Friday the 22nd, her father’s birthday, I delivered my great coup, a musical surprise which came off brilliantly. Together with Hauser, who sang Donner, Froh, and Wotan—and jolly well too—I presented her with part of the Rheingold. There was no time to get in other instruments, no space either, in the tiny room of the Prussian ambassador, who had invited a crush of people. This is what we did:
From page 198 of the pianoforte score—where Donner conjures up the spirits, preceded by the Valhalla motif, transposed into B flat, on the pianoforte by way of introduction—down to page 208, “in Valhalla dwell with me” (with the storm slightly abbreviated); after which, by way of epilogue, as it were, came page 54 of the pianoforte score. Don’t scold me too much for my crazy expedients; the effect exceeded all expectations. With my own hand I had written out programs with the words and a brief preliminary explanation for Their Highnesses. They were most grateful to me. Indeed I was given plainly to understand that they would like me to move to Karlsruhe as successor to Strauss, who is shortly to be pensioned. I declined. That put an end at once to the suspicions (very much in evidence) of my disinterestedness in view of my repeated visits to the court. Kalliwoda is now in a blissful state on his release from the nightmare of being driven from the conductor’s chair by me, and he and his colleagues will work for the idea which I brought forward without in the least compromising you. As dictated to them it was this: “The Grand Duke nominated R. W. as general music director with a yearly salary of five thousand florins. R. W. has no other obligation than to conduct a few concerts and those operas by himself or by Gluck which he desires to single out for special performance. (Kalliwoda takes Strauss’s place as a working ordinary conductor.)” This idea has at last been laid before the Grand Duke in concise form by the Flemmings. How long he will go about pregnant with it Heaven only knows. What I could do has been done.
I could not go to him about it myself. It would have been necessary to stay yet another week for that. And that was impossible, as I had received most disquieting news of my dear wife’s health. On my return I am glad to say I found this news to have been somewhat exaggerated. Still I am not yet out of suspense. In June she will have to go to Reichenhall on the borders of Tirol (ten miles from Salzburg) for several months, and everything must go by the board so that I may take her there and superintend her treatment. Otherwise the cure will be useless, as she never can take her own weal and woe seriously.
I will not write more today. My private sorrows become non-existent in the face of such of life’s problems as concern those most precious to me: you and my wife. Nothing of consequence has happened here. I told Fräulein Frommann about everything on the day I arrived. I expect your wife will have exchanged various letters with her since then. Hülsen’s retirement is certain. His successor, Dachröden, is a classicomaniac of the first water.
I found the press here wallowing in the mud of the Paris correspondence from a Jewish pen. Where I could intervene informatively, as in the case of Kossak (who was better than the rest), I did so. But really I am too old a hand to worry, le lendemain, over the newspaper trash of la veille. After all, what does it matter? You may rely upon another letter from me soon and rely, too, upon the loyalty of your pianoforte-Hans.
Kindest regards to your wife, whom I am perhaps coming to know a little better, and to Kietz, who was so good as to write to me.
Source: Letters of Hans von Bülow to Richard Wagner, Cosima Wagner, His Daughter Daniela, Luise von Bülow, Karl Klindworth, Carl Bechstein, ed. Richard Count Du Moulin Eckart, trans. Hannah Waller, ed. Scott Goddard (Alfred A. Knopf, 1931), No. 287