To-day, my dear Mienel, I am able to report to you on sundry matters; what I most should like, however, would be to report receipt of news from you! The day after tomorrow it will be a week since I left you, and I may surely be pardoned for wishing to know how you are: — so write! —
The family which took rooms after me on the same floor, and drove me into others, has arrived; it is the Köster family, and close beside me I can now hear Adriano being practised. Strange coincidence in this big Berlin! — Yesterday I was able to hold the first regular ensemble-rehearsal, and had much reason to be satisfied; Taubert has been industrious, and even the Köster, who only reached here late the night before, came punctually to the rehearsal and shewed she had already been learning up. The choruses are splendid! Ah, what good it does one after Dresden! — I had taken Pfister through his paces the day before: the fellow has no lack of good will, and his voice will pass muster if one doesn't think of Tichatscheck; but the misfortune is, the man has learnt nothing at all, lacks the merest a b c. All the same, he isn't clumsy, and I was surprised how fairly rapidly he followed this and that suggestion or example I set him. The part will probably pull him through, and he won't hear of a doubt of endurance; he declares he could sing the whole of it and not break down. Good luck to him!
There are rehearsals every day now, and I've quite enough to do. The day slips by so soon here, that I haven't yet arrived at proper intercourse with stage-manager, scene-painter, or ballet-master! All last evening I spent chatting with my neighbour, Köster; a first-rate energetic poet-brain, with whom I went quite deep. He has an excellent influence on his wife; her voice is very agreeable and pure — she will make a very good Elsa here. Yesterday I also remembered it was highest time to announce myself to Meyerbeer, who is here. I didn't catch him, so left a card to go on with: — neither is he likely to be overjoyed about my Rienzi! — The Frommann is to arrive to-day; I have seen no more acquaintances as yet, nor have I managed yet to call on Tieck at Potsdam. —
Dear child, the time of your arrival is still a long way off; at times I fall into a thorough fit of anxiousness about you — when you do not write to me, I begin to fancy you are ill! What a ghastly thought it is to me, that the leaves at home must now be yellowing and falling more and more! — On my walks through the streets here, when I meditate on this Berlin and what it possibly might have in store for me, that we even might remove here in the long run, a strange enough feeling comes over me; I cannot form a notion of it yet at all, at all! — Neither will I vex my mind with it much, for doubtless I'm dreading without any need. Lord, how contented one might be with Dresden — if the nest had but a little higher standing! That this place is more the right field for my artworks, is undeniable, — but a truce to these fantasies! —
I eat at Meinhard's — on a running account (— if the man takes any pay for it, which I still do not believe!) My landlord also keeps a restaurant, so that I can get anything I like at home, even dinner if I wanted. — Nothing paid him either yet; so things are going very well, you see! There's room to take in you, and even Klare; another point disposed of.
Now, write to me, you good old girl; God grant you're in good health! Lonelier than me you are not — for only when we two are together, are we also not lonely. You cheerfully might come here even earlier, if you would eke out with the Frommann when I can't be much at home. — Just think it over. —
Farewell, and remain an atom good to me!
Greet — na, you know all about that! — Adieu, good Minna.
Thy Richard.
There's a Peps always haunting this street; — it surely can't be ours?
Dear child, please tell Meser he's to send me two textbooks of Tannhäuser immediately by post.
Source: Richard to Minna Wagner: Letters to His First Wife, trans. William Ashton Ellis, Vol. 1 (H. Grevel & Co., 1909), No. 22