[...] So far as I am able to judge of things at present from reports which have come to me of the character of the performance of my Lohengrin in Weimar, one thing strikes me principally as being absolutely obvious and beyond all possibility of doubt—namely the witness borne to your quite unheard-of efforts and self-sacrifice on behalf of my work, your touching affection for me, and the proof of your genius for making the impossible as good as possible. [...]
[...] Zigesar is doubtful whether the success of my opera is assured, affirms his zeal to exert every power to assure it, but seems to be still in doubt as to the means. [...]
So much is clear at any rate, the performance wearies by its length. I admit I was horrified when I learned that the opera played till nearly eleven at night. When I had finished the opera I played the whole of it through to myself, timing it exactly, and calculated that the first act should last not much over one hour, the second act an hour and a quarter, the last again a little over an hour; so that, taking the entr'actes into consideration, the duration of the whole opera might be estimated as from six o'clock till a quarter to ten at latest. I should have been constrained to doubt whether you took the tempi accurately according to my calculation had I not been expressly informed by musical friends, who know the opera well, that you took the tempi throughout as they knew them from me, indeed here and there perhaps rather faster than more slowly. I must accordingly suppose that the delay occurred where your direct control as conductor is in abeyance, namely in the recitatives. I have been assured, too, that the recitatives were not handled by the singers in the way that I have played them to my friends on the pianoforte. Let me make myself a little more explicit on this point, [...]
[...] Nowhere in my score of Lohengrin have I put the word "recitative" over a vocal phrase—the singers are not to know that there are recitatives in it. On the other hand I have taken care to weigh and to indicate the spoken emphasis of the words so closely and exactly that it ought only to be necessary for the singers to sing the notes exactly according to their value in the tempo indicated in order to arrive at the correct speaking expression through that means alone. [...]
A great impression was made upon me by Dingelstedt's appreciative and intelligent article on the performance of my Lohengrin. [...]
If my opera is cut, the thread of meaning which runs through it will be broken and, far from popularising it, will make my whole intention, which the public has but just begun to perceive, a closed book to this same public and even to the performers themselves. If I make terms with the enemy it means that victory is not mine. The enemy must be forced to surrender, and that enemy is the inertia and slackness of our performers who will have to be driven to feel and to think. [...] If my Lohengrin can only be kept going by cutting [...] to suit the laziness of the performers, then I shall give the whole opera up—Weimar will then have no more interest for me than any other theatre—and I shall have written my last opera. [...]
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Vol. 1, selected and ed. Wilhelm Altmann, trans. M. M. Bozman (J. M. Dent & Sons, 1927), No. 184