[...] I have been much interested by what you tell me of Tichatschek, although it fills me with melancholy, too, to see from this very instance of the sensation caused by T.'s achievements, in how bad a way we must be for tenors to-day. No one who sees and hears one of these people again—infrequently (like me)—can conceive how problems—such as mine—are to be even approximately solved by such eunuchs. In this respect, too, the outlook for my operas is a gloomy one in Germany, so that I am often afraid of suddenly being amnestied and finding myself in a position to share in sight and hearing of this distressing state of things! [...] What you write of Mannheim has naturally pleased me much. [Vincent] Lachner visited me here in Zurich last winter and I found him a sensible, able, though completely uninspired person. Your account of his performance [Lohengrin] confirms this impression. Wherever you deviate from him in the direction of my opera—particularly in the overture—simply take it for granted that you are in the right. Upon the subject of conducting in general, my views are becoming more and more definite, and I am firmly convinced that only very few have the gift for conducting the intelligent work of others so as to do full justice to it. In this, as, after all, in everything, one must be a bit of a genius if one is not to be utterly commonplace.—[...]
I am recovering now in the mountains—unfortunately in bad weather—from my London expedition [...]. I am at work again now!—When am I to get a sight of you again?? [...]
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Vol. 1, selected and ed. Wilhelm Altmann, trans. M. M. Bozman (J. M. Dent & Sons, 1927), No. 287