Please read the last page first and then go back to the beginning according to inclination and mood, or not at all! My friend! They tell me that your perpetually increasing discouragement is driving you to ask for fresh sacrifices on my part. It would be unpardonable in me to go on flattering this weakness!—
During our six months' study of Tannhäuser I have had the satisfaction of working so advantageously upon singers, who previously had not an idea of how my music is to be sung, that one is amazed at the improvement which later became apparent in their performances. While everything here improves, and fills me with joy and hope, you seem to pretend to deteriorate and recoil step by step, robbing me of the satisfaction of gaining any kind of influence over you. While Mme. Tedesco, for instance, surprises me by achieving what she said she would never be able to achieve, and while Mlle. Sax, at my insistence, attains a lung-capacity of which she seemed to have no idea before and can sing passages, such as the close of her adagio in the second finale, as beautifully as you heard her do at the rehearsal the day before yesterday, I have failed to persuade you so much as to adopt a different division of the breathing to unite the two sections of the first verse of Tannhäuser's song for the purpose of getting a more beautiful, more profound and more satisfying effect in this passage!
Although I chose you from all Germany, at a time when you were little known even there, distinguished you before France, nay, before all Europe, by summoning you and no other to Paris as the one singer whom I could trust, completely, blindly, I have never succeeded, since your arrival in Paris, in winning the least trust from you. You have kept me—I may almost say insultingly—at a distance. You have carefully avoided taking any advice from me. You have been so discourteous as to tell me, very prematurely, that you intend to leave the Parisian production of Tannhäuser in the lurch, once for all, at the end of May; that in future you do not intend to have much to do with my operas at all, and thereby you shatter my new-born hope of having found the right singer for my heroic rôles, well knowing the importance I attach to you for my future and that of my works.—
Well, I can only put up with it and make my future plans accordingly.
But for the moment we are concerned with the immediate question of this Parisian production of Tannhäuser. In this matter I cannot conceal from you the things that weigh on my heart.—
It is true that you showed from the first that you were not minded to accept any analysis of your interpretation from me, and yet I hoped that your innate artistic susceptibility would bring about an understanding between us on various points of detail. Though you proved yourself very stubborn in this respect, I hoped I saw that you had taken a hint here and there. I now realise, that after six months of work together, your sole object, ultimately, is to reduce the great performance I expected of you to the exact level of your previous performances in this rôle. [...]
The fact that it was possible for you to give only the third act in Germany, is in itself a disclosure of the weak point in your previous performance. Even mediocre singers have succeeded in being comparatively effective in this third act. [...] Now I tell you that I make you a present of the whole of this third act if you will only give me a good finale to the second act. There is the dramatic crisis, there is the moment at which Tannhäuser must claim and compel the most intense interest. If he fails in this, the whole third act becomes a mere piece of staginess for which I would not give a snap of the fingers. [...]
[...] Think of nothing but this second finale; throw yourself into it body and soul, as if you had not a note more to sing. [...] It is the decisive moment for the whole evening! Believe me, trust me only this once and you shall hear no more of me for the rest of your life!! Once you have brought out the "pitié pour moi" as I have heard you do it repeatedly, as you can do it, in a way to make the hair stand on end and shake the heart, everything, everything will be achieved, the immediate effect will be immeasurable, and all that follows will be—child's-play. [...]
Once more—sing the second finale as if it was your last note for the evening, and be assured that only then will you sing the third act to my entire satisfaction. In a word, you are, to my mind, much too fresh, too sensuously powerful in the third act, and up till now I have waited in vain for the nuances I demand. In this scene I do not want any exhibition of sensual vocal power; everything in your presentation is still far too material. To keep step with you I should have to re-instrument my entire orchestra at your entrance. There is a deliberately calculated ghostly tonelessness at this point, which should rise gradually to an expression of pathetic tenderness, but no higher. You give the whole narrative up to the arrival in Rome with too much physical vigour. That is not the way the story would be told by a man just awakened from madness for a lucid quarter of an hour, a being from whom those who meet him shrink fearfully away, who has scarcely eaten for months and whose life is preserved only by a tiny flame of half-mad longing. In your mouth, the papal excommunication has, indeed, an energy which is crushingly effective, but if the physical exhibition of this energy were to be weakened a little, the right effect would by no means be lost, but rather, when supported by suitable rhetorical delivery, become exactly what it should be. Now, far be it from me to wish anything different here, but I simply wanted to tell you that you should not sacrifice your performance in the second finale to this passage. And I want to prove to you that even if Tannhäuser should be somewhat hoarse in Act III. it would be no misfortune, whereas I consider it would be a real misfortune if Tannhäuser were obliged, by physical means, to secure an interest in Act III. which he had missed in the critical Act II. [...]
[...] I would suggest to you with complete conviction that you would be mistaken not to attempt the new verse in the Song Contest; it would mean loss of brilliance and of a very necessary dramatic moment. But it is absolutely impossible for me to sacrifice the passage in the second finale because of your momentary discouragement! And surely it would be strange for you, the young and vigorous hero, to go back to Germany and there learn the effectiveness of this passage from old Tichatschek, for he still sings it!
Courage, courage, friend! Don't let yourself fall a victim to a softness which so ill becomes you! Sing the passage at the full rehearsal with all your might, and then we shall see its effect on the third act.
This is the last request which I, as author, shall make you. You have made it plain enough to me that for the future I shall be obliged, with great sorrow I admit to you, to do without you.
11.30 o'clock.
I had got thus far when your letter arrived.
I see now the stage you have reached. You use language towards me which I really can only understand by putting myself back into the earliest years of my troublous career.
I think I can assure you, however, that you are mistaken when you speak of the failure which you have involved yourself in, and wonder who has been reporting boulevard gossip to you.
I ask myself hesitatingly whether it can be any use now to send you this letter, or whether it will only make matters worse. However, I will not take such abrupt leave of my last hope on the artistic side.
This letter will show you what a very great opinion I have of you, and perception of this must surely preserve you from any superficial misunderstanding of the spirit in which I write to you.
On one point, however, I take back what I have written above—that is to say, I declare my readiness to cut the passage in dispute. [...]
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Vol. 2, selected and ed. Wilhelm Altmann, trans. M. M. Bozman (J. M. Dent & Sons, 1927), No. 484