You must have taken my letter, dear Master, for a feverish eccentricity of the moment. It was not that, however. I had kept it by me two days, and posted it at last because my conception of things and my condition had undergone no change whatever. It is not merely the Tristan rehearsals with Herr and Frau Vogl (who, I must in honesty say, are so keen as to be marvellous) and the terrible memories bound up with them that give my nerves the final touch, but also my vexations and disappointments; and the dirty tricks that have been played on me have reached such a climax that my joy in life and in work is turned to gall, in fact destroyed. I have had enough—enough of myself and enough of living in Munich, or indeed in Germany at all. The conditions are against my doing useful work for “art” either here or anywhere else. It is better therefore that I should be replaced here by a younger man, and this naturally brings me to Klindworth in connexion with the approaching performance of Rheingold on August 25. I enclose the letter I had from him recently. It is impossible for me to answer him. I can no longer make pretences or gloss over certain things. My head swims, and every day there are times when I feel I am on the way to madness.
My mother was so anxious about me last month that she obtained a certificate from Dr. Rubner to the effect that I was in danger of serious illness unless I had some leave, but I could not bring myself to make use of it as long as I could keep going to the school or the theatre. I am still keeping it up: mornings at nine, conference (to fit in rehearsals and so on); at ten, orchestral rehearsal of Tristan (it will be impossible to do really fine work with it); three to six at the school; six to eight—or nine, for the Vogls are indefatigable—pianoforte rehearsal of Tristan. Some transpositions in the second act and cuts in the third—made with the utmost piety, as you will believe—have cost me much thought, but will come out all right. With Tristan my conducting comes to a close. There will be a fatalistic rightness about it. Richter may take over Rheingold. There are still the examinations in the end of July; then I am released from that post also. As for the rest, I must take what comes.
I am sending a letter I had today from Düfflipp, together with a copy of Lipovsky’s letter to him about Tristan. I begin to think that certain earlier rumours were not quite groundless. To order a performance of Oberon in its original form, with the prose of the first text complete without any omissions, really smacks of Charenton!
I am most grateful to you for suggesting that we should have a talk together. Writing is frightfully difficult for me and there is so much that cannot be expressed in a letter. We shall in any case be compelled to meet before long to discuss certain situations, the probable outcome of which I begin dimly to foresee. It will be all the same to you, I expect, if we put it off until after Tristan.
Frau Richter has caused me a good deal of trouble by her passionate self-assertion and pretensions. She is perpetually demanding special treatment for her pupils at the school, just as if they were her private ones. Dispensation from the obligatory tuition in pianoforte and theory is one such privilege, and, for another, she takes them at her house in the afternoons after their mornings at the institute, for which (naturally) they pay her, at the rate of twenty-five florins a month. We are therefore snowed under with requests for exhibitions from women who already have scholarships. Concurrently with their first voice-production studies these young ladies practise the parts of Isolde, Brangäne, Brünnhilde, and Sieglinde. Their teacher assures me that they will do brilliantly in the examinations, and when I protest against her accepting so many pupils who seem to be without talent because they take away from the others, she replies that the excellence of her method of producing results out of nothing will thus be displayed at its best. So there you are. But what with one pulling this way, the other that, and quarrels and scandals without end, I see no prospect of being able to smooth things out or organize anything, and I realize that I am not equal to running this institution. Among the instrumental classes one has to do so much policing on account of childish pranks, yet it is quite without effect, as the council and intendant have so often shown favour instead of inflicting punishment that the statutes are no longer respected. It may be that my colleagues will see wisdom in the next school-year, but so far as I am concerned it is too late. I am dead tired, dried up, speechless with disgust. “Only one thing do I still desire—the end.”
I hope to see you soon. How would Lindau do for our meeting-place?
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. 294