Dear Old Fellow,
I hear absolutely nothing more of you: are you offended with me?
I asked you recently to send a Tannhäuser to Mannheim. They also want to give the Flying Dutchman in Mainz; if the director, M. Ernst, sends in a postal receipt for ten louis d'or, you can at once let him have the score (corrected).
In conclusion, I have many requests to make to-day. Among the music I left behind, there are
1. All the detached numbers from Rienzi;
2. Ditto, Flying Dutchman;
3. Ditto, Tannhäuser;
as they came out at X.'s in their time. I should much like to have these sent by return. If they cannot be found, please persuade Kr. to have the things presented to me from X.'s store of publications. I am in bad want of them.
Then could not the Dresden Court Theatre make me a present of a good copy of the score of Iphigenia in Aulis as I arranged it, so that I might at all events have a souvenir of this work?
Please see what can be done.
If L. is unwilling, at least have the overture copied for me (at my expense), with the ending which I published last year in the Leipz. Zeitsch. f. Musik.
Ah me! I only get snatches of time for writing, because I have always such an intolerable lot of letters to get through.
I heartily long to see you once again and have a chat.
At the end of February I go for two months to London, to conduct the concerts of the Philharmonic Society, for which they expressly sent one of their directors here to persuade me. As a rule, that kind of thing does not suit me; and as I am not to get much pay for it, I would scarcely have consented, had I not therein seen a chance of next year bringing together in London, under the protection of the Court, a first-rate German opera company, with which I could give my operas, and at last my Lohengrin.
For the rest, I am as stubborn as ever, am working most diligently, and already scoring the Walküre.
Has Liszt sent the Rheingold? If so, let Wölfel copy quickly, so that, if possible, I may have my score back before I leave for London.
Now, do please write once more!
A million greetings from me and Minna. Farewell!
Your
Rich. Wag.
Source: Richard Wagner's Letters to His Dresden Friends, Theodor Uhlig, Wilhelm Fischer, and Ferdinand Heine, trans. J. S. Shedlock (Scribner & Welford, 1890), No. 129