[...] My friend! The Grand Duchess of Baden believed she could trace some pleasant experience in my own life in my "Pogner," whose rôle I read with special warmth, and finally urged me to see that I get a particularly good singer for this rôle when I come to distribute the parts. I was quite extraordinarily pleased by the impression produced. I really feel that I have built a monument to a friend in the love with which I have handled this part—and now in the music too, [...]
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Vol. 2, selected and ed. Wilhelm Altmann, trans. M. M. Bozman (J. M. Dent & Sons, 1927), No. 537