Most valued Friend,
My heartiest thanks to the "righteous" for their lovely greeting, which I could not reply to at once in all the turmoil of removal and preparation for the festival.
In the pressure of business merely this, to confirm our arrangements: I count on the following orchestral contingent from Mannheim: 2 first violins, 2 second violins, 1 viola, 1 violoncello, 1 flute (2nd), 1 drummer — making 8 musicians, for further communications about whom I will refer our committee to M[usik]d[irekto]r Langer.
Is that right?
Could you lend and send me a pair of drums (good ones)? — Hardly, I suppose.
Best wishes to the "first beginners,"
To shame of all the "sinners"!
Wife and child are better here.
On the 5th to Vienna. Letters to my Council of Management.
Yours,
R. Wagner.
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner to Emil Heckel, with a Brief History of the Bayreuth Festivals, trans. William Ashton Ellis (Grant Richards, 1899), No. 26