This time you may again accuse me, Theodore, of not having written to you for a long time. It sounds almost absurd to excuse myself by saying that I have not had time. Yet in a sense it is so. My God, what haven't I been working at! First there is my job that often robs me of every spare hour for weeks together, and then there is the composition of my opera which I shall have finished by New Year's Eve. I am now at the focus of my talent, I do everything with ease and success. As regards the production I have now made up my mind. It will do well here at the end of February '36. In many respects I could nowhere produce the opera more advantageously than here, with two excellent tenors and an Isabella such as I could seldom better, our real genius of a Pollert. She has no name in Germany as yet, because she comes from Petersburg, but she will soon draw tears from all your eyes. So I shall produce my Liebesverbot for the first time here, get Cornet from Braunschweig, Cerf from Berlin and Ringelhardt from Leipzig for the occasion, and then, please God, I launch my opera. That is my scheme of opera-tions!
I live here as if in prison—oh, things must change soon—this bourgeois effort and struggle to keep body and soul together must end soon. You have no idea what this sort of thing is like, dear Theodore. I know it now and when it is over I shall pride myself on it a little. I have no spirit for that at present. Enough of this, you will not feel it. Only this much more. Let anyone come now and turn up his nose at my love for Minna and I will bash it in for him! God knows how and what I should be without her now! This simple intimation may suffice you—I will leave the rest to your imagination! I am writing this letter at her desk. Love upon love, I am with her and writing to you. [...]
Laube is going to Berlin for the winter. I am very pleased with the preface to the second volume of his Charakteristiken. You often ask after Schmale; he left here a long time ago. You would hardly know our theatre again—everything is new but good. If we keep together for a time we are bound to attract attention. [...]
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Vol. 1, selected and ed. Wilhelm Altmann, trans. M. M. Bozman (J. M. Dent & Sons, 1927), No. 29