My Dear Old Beloved Friend!
Thank you heartily for your good, good letter! How did you and your excellent dear wife (who made such a good prompter for you) feel after that Bengal night on the Brühl'sche Terrasse? Since we have not managed to write each other again since then, one can see how frantically engaged we are with our occupations! Oh Lord! I would gladly settle down to undisturbed peace, and yet I can see such devilish years ahead of me! Many times I feel like letting everything go, and following the advice which an old soldier gave Frederick the Great after the battle of Kolin: "Now Your Majesty should let a battle be a battle!" — At all events, you are too early with your congratulations on my being released by next year: the performances cannot be accomplished before 1875 — still presuming, always, that we shall manage to scrape together the amount we need for expenses. However, for the present, the patrons will be invited to come to Bayreuth next fall and see for themselves the theatre building, which by that time will be roofed over and ought to give them an idea, I hope, that I am in earnest about my undertaking and not promoting any joke. I hope that you also will come then?
Now, however, I haven't a single contribution for that well-meant Linkische Bad concert: what do your good friends think, that I have compositions for mixed chorus lying around among my things? That isn't really my sort, and everything that I have written lies before you. I don't possess a scrap of music that belongs to anything except my large works. And on the whole — oh! best of friends! — do you all (with the exception of the admirable Bartheldes) seriously believe that you can accomplish anything in Dresden with a concert even so sensibly arranged? It seems to me that entirely different means must be adopted, in order to make sure of success for an undertaking that is so unusual and so entirely new. Now I want to see, first of all, what impression our finished Stage Festival building will make on all those who will become acquainted with it. One of these days my patrons will be sent a new pamphlet (with 6 plans) on this subject. I am doing everything in my power: if one strand snaps, then I spin another; some time at length I shall surely hit the right mark.
Now let me embrace you heartily (together with wife and child). I am much taken up with things, have lots of work to do, and in the mean time I am sitting here calmly. Try to let me see you all here with autumn!
With the close affection of old, your
grateful friend,
Richard Wagner
Source: The Letters of Richard Wagner to Anton Pusinelli, trans. and ed. Elbert Lenrow (Alfred A. Knopf, 1932), No. 72