Dearest Friend!
Here are the two signatures! May this encroachment upon the real existence of my family at least serve to gain time enough in which to learn in peace and quiet how matters stand, and with what kind of people I shall have to deal throughout my life. In order to see clearly for the future, I feel myself obliged to recognise that it is not my work which has been censured but—Bayreuth.
My works will be performed everywhere and attract numerous spectators, but no one will come to Bayreuth.
This is the real state of the case, and the cause of the intervening coolness for my enterprise. I can blame the place only in so far that I chose it. And yet I had a great idea in so doing; I hoped, with the support of the nation, to create a thoroughly new and independent work in a place which should first rise to importance through this work—a sort of Art-Washington.
I had too high an opinion of our best society. In order to please me, and at the same time to satisfy their curiosity, they sacrificed themselves once to the terrible inconvenience of Bayreuth, but became frightened when a repetition was suggested. Therefore the coolness toward my enterprise. A very important London firm communicated to me an offer to remove the Bayreuth stage machinery to a big London theatre, with a repetition of the Festival during the whole of next season. If I really wished it, a theatre like mine would be built for me in Leipzig, and Würzburg or Nuremberg, to judge by the great success of the preceding year, would be able to compensate me and continue the work. Bayreuth can only be a success if my idea of a musical and dramatic high school, which I recently pointed out, could be carried into effect, as this would lead to distinguished people settling there. The city itself, which would reap great profit, could present a petition to the King, etc.
As far as I am concerned, I shall probably do nothing more than worry myself to death to cover the deficit and get rid of the theatre! I am frightened anew at hearing of the manner in which the twenty thousand marks recently received in Vienna has melted away to seven thousand nine hundred.
Dolce far niente—yes, yes! Do nothing!—No: accomplish nothing! that is my vocation.
Now, as God wills! I remain under everlasting obligations to you!
Cordial greetings from
Your devoted
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. 107