[...] What confirms me more strongly in my resolve to remain in strict retirement, is the possibility of producing Tannhäuser here, even yet.
If this should come about, I can only collaborate upon one condition, which is that I concern myself with nothing but the work itself. [...] The performance might possibly take place in the middle of January. The translation is still the main difficulty, and I see this much—that my young aspirant for success in vaudeville whom I've been taking all this trouble over, will not do at all. Now, however, the best prospect conceivable has presented itself. I [...] will only tell you that Roger is now under consideration as translator, [...]
With all the rest I have trouble enough, and especially with my excellent Devrient at Karlsruhe. I see that he at last has sunk pretty deep into mere routine. For all his eminent qualities there has always unfortunately been a leathery strip in his nature which now seems to have lost all its elasticity. The answers he makes me at times! [...] My affairs there are by no means settled as yet, and I have still to receive speaking proofs of energetic purpose in the capital young Grand Duke. [...]
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Vol. 2, selected and ed. Wilhelm Altmann, trans. M. M. Bozman (J. M. Dent & Sons, 1927), No. 433