[...] I am very sad to have heard nothing from you for so long! It is not that I want to get anything out of it save the comfort of receiving a sign of life from you. After all, we are the only two who were agreed from the first as to the carrying out of the work, and the finest thing so far has been the reception on your finished stage. Why have you forgotten all about me now?
I might have been pardoned for much. Things have not gone well with me since the end of our preliminary rehearsals. Hemmed in between swindlers, perjurers and rogues of all kinds, it is long since I drew a cheerful breath.—
I have really no business matter to discuss with you. Difficulties of all sorts—yet firm resolution and confidence! Frau Jaide has written to me very beautifully. She is plainly the most gifted and the most "conscious" artiste of the ladies in our company. I was, no doubt, right to estimate her so highly from the first. It is possible she will be most useful to me in not undertaking the biggest rôles, but in carrying through two episodes which need just as great an artiste as do the bigger parts. [...]
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Vol. 2, selected and ed. Wilhelm Altmann, trans. M. M. Bozman (J. M. Dent & Sons, 1927), No. 682