[...] At last I come to the point of sending you my congratulations on your splendid achievement, as well as expressing my own heartfelt delight in the success of your performances. Till now I could not tear myself away from my final work on the composition of Parsifal. That is now finished and you are the first to whom I turn in the world outside.
You in Mannheim have given a very instructive example of what can be done by real good will. As I have been obliged to abandon repetitions of the Bayreuth performances, it is only through very careful reproduction on our ordinary public stage that my work (if it is not to be wholly lost and forgotten) can prove that it at least retains vitality and interest. Having set about your self-chosen task with anxious care, comparing the resources of your theatre with those of the very foremost Court theatres, you determined to proceed on my maxim, that is, to grasp the problem intellectually. A carefully initiated, able, vigorous and, above all, convinced conductor—such an one is my guarantee for all the rest. Glad as I am of the public applause of Fischer, it has not in the least surprised me. I knew what he would achieve. Well, it was very fortunate for me that after finding a few able and instructed conductors I should at last have found a theatrical manager to call one of them to office. Before then my recommendations had always been disadvantageous to my candidates. Our Court Theatre intendants, etc., hate nothing so much as a so-called "Wagnerian," and cry "Lord preserve us! We should get a man who wants endless rehearsals, particularly when things are not going well, and who refuses to make a 'cut' anywhere, although things always go better when they are quite unintelligible. No, thank you! I get on best with servile bunglers!" Well, this time things were better in Mannheim. I hope too that it will do the Leipzig performances good that the management there have willingly chosen a man I recommended, a comrade of Fischer's in the Bayreuth performances [Seidl]. Add to that, with our young Brandt, it might be hoped and supposed that the whole administration (to whom I am, indeed, bound in gratitude) would be swept along in the right direction. Under such conditions singers and musicians work miracles. I know by experience. But—the chief miracle is that Heckel is a theatrical manager! Good luck! Now I understand the workings of Fate! [...]
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Vol. 2, selected and ed. Wilhelm Altmann, trans. M. M. Bozman (J. M. Dent & Sons, 1927), No. 715