Highly esteemed Sir and Friend!
Accept my sincerest thanks for your efforts, of which you inform me in your kind letter, and be assured that it is not until now, after having become more closely acquainted with you and your important achievements, that I feel myself relieved on the subject of the artistic success of our undertaking. Highly as I valued the news from you, I was prevented by a very special reason from letting you hear from me until later.
Even now I am not in possession of information which would permit me to feel assured of positive assistance, and without which it would seem ill-advised to adhere to the year 1875 for the performances, or to grant the contracts for the beginning of the work at the first of the year.
As I expect any day now, however, to receive this information, and which from certain signs I venture to hope will prove favourable, I must beg of you to exercise the same patience with me. As we, furthermore, have as yet only provisory information as to your conditions, permit me to notify you, on my part, that I, as well as the gentlemen of the committee, consider your demands and suggestions quite reasonable, and only in one particular will it be necessary to find some other way of satisfying you, and that is in regard to the two per cent royalty that you claim, without our first being able to discover upon what basis of receipts this percentage is to be deducted.
The performances at the Festival Theatre in Bayreuth are never to be accessible by an admission fee, nor are they to be given for the financial profit of any person. On the contrary, they are to take place, once for all, only when the costs of the same—that is, the necessary outlay and the compensation for the assisting personnel—shall be covered by the voluntary subscriptions of the patrons, but never is there to be a question of recompense for the author.
I believe, however, that I shall be able to comply with your wishes by pledging myself to permit such theatres as wish to present my works according to the customary admission fees, to do so only under the condition that the scenery is executed from your designs and that an agreement concerning the same is entered into with you and your heirs.
For the present, as our money has grown quite scarce, we have instructed Baron Viktor v. Erlanger in Vienna, who has pledged himself for fifteen hundred thalers, to pay this sum to you immediately as the compensation which you claim, and do not doubt that this will be done.
I have to express my sincere thanks, as well as those of my wife, for your kind souvenir and also for your obliging efforts, and at the same time to beg you to remember us both cordially to your esteemed wife whom we have not the pleasure of knowing.
With the reservation of more definite news for you shortly, I remain, with the deepest respect,
Yours,
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. 51