[...] There is trouble in Bayreuth. The architect cannot accommodate more than two hundred singers on the stage; hence the notices you have received. I have now allotted the entire parterre (including the reserved seats) for the further accommodation of the chorus. I have still to learn how many it will hold. The whole seating accommodation for the audience is only sufficient for seven hundred persons. From this I must now deduct the free seats for the people who are to entertain the orchestra and chorus. One hundred musicians and three hundred singers means four hundred free seats, and at least one hundred seats in the parterre must be given to the singers. Now you can reckon what will be left for my patrons, etc. Notwithstanding, I am determined that no good singer is to be refused admittance (for actually the whole audience should join in the singing!). Accordingly I shall see that the singers you are bringing me have places, but I only promise you this on condition that you, my esteemed friend, bring none but really good singers. As you see, there is no room for a merely morally well-intentioned choir, and, should my patrons apply for places in large numbers, it would be unpardonable to refuse them seats (who make sacrifice after sacrifice for me) in order to accommodate mere "passengers," as the saying goes, who pay nothing. Besides, experience also leads me to the decision. I mean, that so many instrumentalists, on a merely numerical basis, ought to be reckoned to so many singers. At Weber's funeral in Dresden the choir were not sufficient for the song I had written and the whole thing sounded wretched and poor till my old choirmaster, Fischer, got together all the soloists and chorus of the theatre and let the thirty or forty of them sing my song together, and then everything else was put into the shade. You understand me? [...]
Stern is bringing me fifty-four singers. [...]
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Vol. 2, selected and ed. Wilhelm Altmann, trans. M. M. Bozman (J. M. Dent & Sons, 1927), No. 656