Dear Friend,
I can only write to you to-day if I make up my mind to be brief. I am so fearfully overwrought and unnerved that the least bit of writing is a torture to me. Yesterday, the 2nd May, we had the last performance of the Dutchman. Within a week it was the fourth of the series, all given at considerably raised prices (first tier, five francs), and always to crowded houses. In this you have the full expression of the success. The director much regretted that he had to go off to Geneva to-morrow, because he saw that he could now have given the opera yet another four times. I really think it an unheard-of thing to have been able to give such an opera every second day to so small a public with success. The performances, from the second onward, when the baritone had recovered his voice, were excellent; but naturally only from the "opera" point of view. The first performance showed me clearly that I must give up all illusions about the "drama," and be content to have made the most of the "opera" stuff which still clings to the Dutchman. So the result really left me quite indifferent, and my inmost feelings of my relation to our theatre and public have not been thereby changed in the least. But that the Dutchman proved effective even as "opera" I can now understand, and I willingly acknowledge that the impression made upon my public was unusual, deep, and serious. The women naturally took the lead again: after the third performance they crowned me with laurel and smothered me in flowers. The opera will certainly please in Weimar also.
Kummer came yesterday to Zurich for the fourth performance. He brought me your bulky letter, for which many thanks. I cannot possibly, as I said, answer it in detail to-day. Only one thing I must mention. Let no one judge of any mode of action unless he thoroughly knows all its bearings. Incomprehensible as my "lavishness" towards the theatre-director here may seem, it will be easily comprehensible to any one who knows exactly the whole situation which prompted my mode of action, with all its accessory circumstances and characteristic moods. He would understand how I came to force upon the theatre-director the payment for deficient receipts, when he would by no means accept the sacrifice from me, but, on the other hand, was not to be induced to give up a performance. In such a case I might certainly have done one thing, viz., give up everything, and withdraw entirely. As, the train of circumstances once started, my sole concern was to give the performance, and properly, so I must needs feel that it was expedient to coax round the director into accepting that arrangement: for it was a question by no means of him personally, but of the success of the undertaking. Besides, Löwe had engaged musicians at cheap prices; but they did not arrive, and wrote to excuse themselves. He had done his duty, I could demand nothing further of him, and he told me I must make shift. I, on the contrary, with a single eye to success, did not make shift, but engaged a musical director from Aarau as first violin, whom I certainly had to pay money for lessons lost during ten days. In the same way I was obliged to arrange with a musical director from Burgdorf, and with a 'cellist, Böhm, from Donaueschingen. Could I have even asked the director about the matter? Would he not have thought I was mad? Were not all artistic matters connected with the undertaking my business alone, and, if I gave this up, should I not have had to give up the whole? Enough!
It is most humiliating for me to have to give these explanations. But how can it come into any one's mind to see in this a false "generosity" on my part? Do you think I boast to any one here, and that I make myself out a man of means? My friends know exactly how matters stand with me, and to any stranger I, at least, make it quite clear.
But kind greetings to the R.'s from me. I certainly won't fly any more Dutchmen.
Ah! ah! ah! what a wretch I must seem to myself!
In the next few days I will answer you about everything in arrears, and will send you what you want; I cannot pack to-day.
Farewell, dearest and best friend. Heartfelt thanks for your faithfulness.
Your
R. W.
Do not forget to let me know your new address. To explain my continued conduct towards the director, I should have, I see, to tell you much more yet, which I hope you will let me off. I need only add — he is a Jew!
Source: Richard Wagner's Letters to His Dresden Friends, Theodor Uhlig, Wilhelm Fischer, and Ferdinand Heine, trans. J. S. Shedlock (Scribner & Welford, 1890), No. 62