[...] It is really not quite without significance that these Mastersingers arrive on the fortieth anniversary of your wedding day. Take from them the spirit of peaceful, smiling resignation. It is this spirit which has inspired the work, and what can beseem us better as we look back on lives full of care and trouble with so few of our wishes fulfilled? That we have borne it all and ultimately given up everything that could be called a hope, shows, does it not, that through it all there was only one real good to be attained—tranquillity of the spirit in renunciation! And truly, one great joy, the only unclouded joy, may be derived therefrom—quiet, disinterested delight in what is good and beautiful. This it was that I had power to offer you when I got you to come to Munich, for I had something to contribute to that kind of enjoyment. Now I send you the work, so that you can live it over again. Turn the pages often, and when your golden wedding day dawns, open it again and perhaps it will sound in your mind's ear of itself. [...]
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Vol. 2, selected and ed. Wilhelm Altmann, trans. M. M. Bozman (J. M. Dent & Sons, 1927), No. 633