There is more to report, but unfortunately not what you expected, dear Master. Kindermann has been so thoroughly put through it by the two Hanses (we never let a single incorrectness pass now) that he has perpetual stage-fright and funks the Flying (not swimming) Dutchman and still more Agamemnon, which is due at almost the same time. Renewed postponement therefore. We are now going to try Agamemnon with Fischer and hope it may do. The fellow really has a glorious voice and is more musical than the baritone hero, though his brain is always asleep. Dutchman now fixed for January 1. I took Senta through everything that she has to sing three times over with the orchestra recently and she has now sung away all her fright. I feel quite confident about her. The choruses have been excellently rehearsed with Richter, and Bachmann (as the Helmsman) will be a great gain to the performance.
As you will certainly be interested in Mamma Richter’s début, I am sending two cuttings, of which the one (Telegraph—Grandauer no longer writes for it) is unjust, but the other (Unterhaltungsblatt) just, though severe. The good lady was very good at rehearsals, but physically and morally indisposed on the evening of the performance. Well, no harm done. I am now in a position to support and protect the singing-mistress.
Your recent telegram was issued to me here in a rather “free” interpretation. Am I to understand that I sent you the Hanslick pamphlet? Hiller took your Rossini article as a personal insult and as professional obstruction, I hear; Herr Professor Schelle, the spoilt barber’s assistant, ditto. The Presse and the Kölnische give proof of it. Perhaps Countess Bassenheim will let you look at them.
In the end of January I shall take about ten days’ leave to give concerts in Brussels and Hanover.
I sent a pianoforte paraphrase of the Quintettchen to Schott the other day. To make it playable I transposed it into G. Ritter’s Alcibiades I have recommended to Fräulein Ziegler (who really is enormously talented—her Medea was marvellous) and she is greatly interested, as is her master Christen (her “maître”); we may perhaps get it put on here.
We have the Barber in preparation now. I am conducting. Richter is to do the Prophet and the Black Domino. In the first I shall play the organ for the first time in my life. The orchestra played really divinely in Fidelio the other day.
The Mallinger affair is still in the balance. Perfall is acting very sensibly (His Majesty likewise). She is perpetually being left in uncertainty, but perhaps time will bring the solution. Her demand was for immediate dismissal or three months’ extension of leave. The Cabinet thereupon lengthened her original leave, which expired on December 10, to the end of the year and referred her to an All-Highest decision at New Year.
The children are well. They had quantities of presents and I am teaching them the rondo motif from the Ninth Symphony.
Good-bye. Most sincere season’s greetings.
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. 292