[...] I expected to hear some good news from Weimar for the New Year, but learned instead that the proposed Court Concert had come off without The Mastersingers Overture—otherwise dead silence in that quarter. [...]
I am still in the greatest uncertainty as to what to do. They are adjuring me not to withdraw Tristan. I recently made the proposal that I should produce The Mastersingers with the Vienna company, which, if it were generously adopted, might ease my situation. Otherwise I hesitate about an invitation to St. Petersburg, there to conduct two concerts of the Philharmonic Society, a business which would, anyhow, bring me in something certain. [...]
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Vol. 2, selected and ed. Wilhelm Altmann, trans. M. M. Bozman (J. M. Dent & Sons, 1927), No. 549