Dear Friend!
I'm writing in a hurry and under the pressure of innumerable interferences — just a short message!
Tell me, how is the publishing business of my operas being conducted?? Is everything being done to earn the profits which it is now so perfectly capable of bringing in?
I understand that the libretti of Tannhäuser are being pirated everywhere: what has been done to stop it? A notice should be published repeatedly in all the theatrical papers, explaining that the texts are to be had legally only through the publisher, and that every pirated edition will be prosecuted severely. Is this being done??
Hasn't an arrangement been published yet for piano only?? — I beg you to have some energy put into this: otherwise I shall straightway be robbed of the property which was so strenuously obtained.
Don't be angry with me for being so curt and violent, but really it fills me with misery to see this excellent time being wasted so.
In 8 days I am going to London. Continue writing to Zurich, I shall receive the letters.
Good-bye, and think affectionately of
Your
Richard W.
Source: The Letters of Richard Wagner to Anton Pusinelli, trans. and ed. Elbert Lenrow (Alfred A. Knopf, 1932), No. 8