Dear young Friend!
Thanks for your letter—it was very kind!
Not until to-day have I been able to write to you! I was obliged to postpone this distressing matter, as my condition is such that my dear wife had scruples about informing me of the sudden death of your dear father—an accident revealed to me this calamity!
You surely understand me and forgive me for not being able to put my feelings into words.
I stand in the third age of humanity, and have already seen two generations of contemporaries pass away; in your father I lost the last member of the second generation which connected me with the past.
In you I greet the third generation, to which I have surrendered the further deeds of my mature old age. I welcome you!
I assume that you are willing to carry into execution the last work in which your father and I were associated. At all events, everything is at your disposal for this, and you know exactly what is to be done in regard to the scenic production of Parsifal.
Permit me therefore to appoint you to the position, in connection with my Bayreuth performance, made vacant by the death of your father.
During my absence of several months my Executive Council in Bayreuth will be ready to give you all information and assist you in all necessary arrangements.
To the most sympathetic greetings to your mother I add the assurances of the most friendly feeling for yourself.
Your deeply sorrowing
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. 121