Dear Friend!
The postman comes every morning about eleven o'clock; I generally work from nine o'clock up to this time, and when the letters arrive I am already somewhat exhausted and in need of rest. So is it to-day, when I have just received your last letter. Now, each time I am placed in the dilemma of either not answering at all, or of doing this as briefly as possible. If I put it off, the same thing occurs each next day; unless I gave up my work for a whole morning, as happens when I make up my mind to write a longish letter. (Only under extreme necessity do I write a single line between twelve o'clock and bed-time.) I explain this to you once for all, so that you may explain to yourself why I write briefly to you when I answer by return, which I am always glad to do, so as to get rid of what requires answering and to induce you to keep our correspondence going.
Not to forget small matters, I will think of them at once. Mosewius sent me his article cut out of the paper, so that I do not know where it really comes from: he only told me it was in a Breslau Conservative paper. (The article in itself is, after all, of no great importance, but it becomes interesting through bearing the signature of Mosewius.) Fabulous news has lately reached me from Breslau: Michaelson wrote a little time ago of eight performances having taken place there to overflowing houses: now Frau Moritz announces to me (from Wiesbaden) that a friend has just written to her from Breslau that in a little over four weeks Tannhäuser had been given there twelve times, and always to crowded houses. Is this really possible?
There was a famous success on the 13th inst. at Wiesbaden. Schindelmeisser had already written to me beforehand (at the same time also about Lohengrin) that it was no longer possible to repress the enthusiasm of the singers and of the orchestra at the rehearsals. From all this I gather that Schindelmeisser's study was beyond all praise. Both he and Frau Moritz tell me of an unprecedented furore after the performance. (Perhaps you have already read something about it in the Frankfort papers?) I pass over individual details to which this "furore" bears witness: above all I rejoice at Schindelmeisser himself (formerly stirred up against me by R.).
After the success merely of the rehearsals, he had resolved on Lohengrin. Frau Moritz assures me the precision was unsurpassable. The railway brought many friends from Cologne (Bischoff!!), Mainz, Frankfort, Darmstadt, etc. The factotum of the Munich Intendant was there, with instructions to send home news at once. In any case Munich will soon give Tannhäuser.
You did quite right about Stuttgart. Tannhäuser will be given at Frankfort in December: but I have not yet got the honorarium: I am daily in expectation of a letter from Hoffmann.
H.'s wrote to me lately (in answer to my offer of the Iphigenia and the Faust Overture for publication): they were very much out of sorts and discouraged by my behaviour, as I always made it so difficult and almost impossible for the theatres to give my operas: my dealings with regard to Leipzig were far too tyrannical, my demands for mounting the works too inconsiderate, etc. Thereupon I spared no pains to put before them in detail my whole intercourse with W., Rietz, etc., and to show them how, on the one hand, W.'s shabbiness in the matter of payment, and on the other hand Rietz's evident disinclination to submit to my purely artistic demands, were the sole causes of the rupture, which for the rest was a solitary exception: whereas even the smallest theatres continued to stand on the best footing with me, etc., etc., etc. Finally I said to them that, through the easy credence which they gave to a man known throughout the town as a liar, they appeared to have fallen into so fatal a frame of mind towards my works that I did not wish to disturb it by any further requests, and therefore withdrew my offers. I shall not get very far with these Philistines: they have no conception whatever of the position and future of my works. Besides, I have so spoilt them by my almost-no-honorarium demands, that they are now naïve enough to imagine that they would never have anything more to pay me than, perhaps, a tiny honorarium-pittance!
I must write to L. about Lohengrin as soon as I know anything definite. (I never presented my opera to him: that I never did so was just what annoyed him, as my policy always consisted in leaving him to approach me. I only agreed to sell him the copy, should he ever desire to produce Lohengrin.) Naturally I have no intention of appealing to the law-courts in this matter. Well, I must stop: my head is getting bad. What I have forgotten I will make up another time. Come, have you not forgotten my admonition respecting the X. publishing affair? Or ought I no longer to burden you with such matters (owing to your unfortunate state of health)? Be candid! But, above all, think about the long leave of absence for next summer! If everything goes well and according to my desire, I can receive you in a magnificent garden and country-house.
The Musical Society in Utrecht (Holland) has been the first to reply to my last notice in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik. The article on Tannhäuser from Dresden is really good: who then is the writer?
I am now working at Young Siegfried. I shall soon have finished it. Then I attack Siegfried's Death — this will take me longer: I have two scenes in it to write afresh (the Norns, and the scene of Brynhilde with the Valkyries), and above all the close: beside these, everything needs most important revision. The whole will then be out — with it! I am impudent enough to say it — the greatest poem ever written!
About my health another time: I am obliged to avoid all fatigue, that of excessive walking also: only in luxurious comfort can this artificial man, myself, now prosper; who knows — if I completely shift the saddle, if I quite forswear my youth, and consciously adopt a brand-new rule of life, perhaps I shall see my way to a little further existence. (Leave sophistries and polemics alone! Hope in me!) Good-bye!
Your Nibelungen prince,
Alberich.
(I will tell you something amusing about Munich next time.)
Source: Richard Wagner's Letters to His Dresden Friends, Theodor Uhlig, Wilhelm Fischer, and Ferdinand Heine, trans. J. S. Shedlock (Scribner & Welford, 1890), No. 89