How now! Friend Heckel! Do you change your opinion so easily? Not long ago you defended Unger—now you believe in Jäger?—Well, I have already begun with Unger, and have taken a great deal of trouble in overcoming his Saxon vocalisation, which made his voice completely unrecognisable, until now I hope to be able to get along with him better than any tenor I know. I shall keep him here all the time; he was apparently lost, but he is a person not without energy. Jäger is excellent, but—
The entertainment question is now entering a new phase: we shall be obliged to manage without building any new hotels.
Cordial greetings from
Your faithful composer,
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. 79