Esteemed Sir!
I beg your indulgence when I inform you that I intend leaving here to-morrow evening (Wednesday) and expect to arrive in Bayreuth on the early train. To this information I add the request that you will exert all your influence in making it possible to settle all the necessary business in connection with the great enterprise to which you have pledged your active co-operation during the time between Thursday and Saturday noon. For unfortunately my time is very much occupied. Thursday I expect to receive Building Inspector Neumann of Berlin, as well as the Master Machinist Carl Brandt of Darmstadt.
The first thing to be looked after will be the building site for the theatre, as well as the necessary decisions in regard to the same which are to be arranged with the worthy council of the city magistrates. The choice of a situation for my own residence lies also very near my heart. A conference with the Court Architect Wölffel, and also the Berlin architect, in regard to the contracts, and the possibility of the adjustment of the question with which I was obliged to trouble you in regard to the accommodations of our future guests, will form the close of our discussion. . . .
In agreeable anticipation of making your valued personal acquaintance, I am
Yours respectfully,
Richard Wagner.
Source: The Story of Bayreuth as Told in the Bayreuth Letters of Richard Wagner, trans. and ed. Caroline V. Kerr (Small, Maynard and Company, 1912), No. 11