Wagner's Letters

Richard Wagner to Minna Wagner

June 15, 1855 · London

Overview

Wagner tells Minna of a visit from Berlioz, reduced to touring for a living, who conducted his Romeo and Juliet Symphony and let a Mozart symphony be murdered at the New Philharmonic.

Letter

[...] Yesterday I had a visit from Berlioz, who is tramping for his daily bread and is in a really bad way. He cannot earn a sou in France and so has to try to eke out a scanty livelihood by concerts (which—as I know—bring him in very little) in England and Germany. He has been invited here by the "New Philharmonic" for two concerts. He has arranged things with the press here already, he, too, having been terribly torn to pieces by it at the beginning. Besides his Romeo and Juliet Symphony he has also conducted a Mozart symphony [G minor] which he let them murder so abominably that I made off. But that is quite English; they like it so, and Berlioz, who is only after money, knows what he must do. Besides he lacks all depth. [...]

Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Vol. 1, selected and ed. Wilhelm Altmann, trans. M. M. Bozman (J. M. Dent & Sons, 1927), No. 285