Wagner's Letters

Correspondence by, to, and around Richard Wagner

Wagner’s letters run from a seventeen-year-old offering a publisher his piano arrangement of Beethoven’s Ninth to a note from Venice a month before his death. Written to patrons, friends, lovers, singers and creditors, they are less guarded than anything he published. They follow his hopes for art from the revolutionary years in Dresden and Zurich, through Schopenhauer and his love for Mathilde Wesendonck, to King Ludwig, Bayreuth and Parsifal.

The letters are arranged by date and can be browsed by correspondent, so that Wagner’s side may be read alongside the replies of Liszt, Nietzsche, Minna Wagner and others. These letters have been compiled from available English-language collections; some letters may be repeated in translations by different translators.

In the letters the thought of the prose is lived: plans conceived, defended, abandoned and reborn amid poverty, exile and scandal. One conviction holds throughout, that art is a matter of life and death and not a trade. What changes is what he hoped art would accomplish. In Dresden and Zurich it is the festival of a free humanity, upheld by a Feuerbachian faith in love. From 1854 Schopenhauer turns it toward renunciation and compassion, a turn the letters to Mathilde Wesendonck give an almost devotional intensity. With King Ludwig it becomes a mission he believed he had been sent to fulfil, and at Bayreuth a sacred stage, ending with Parsifal, which he called his farewell to the world.

The apprentice years. The earliest letters, from Leipzig, Würzburg, Magdeburg and Riga, are those of an ambitious young theatre musician in the spirit of Young Germany, an “epicure” in art who wanted “nothing for posterity, everything for contemporaries.” They chart his courtship of the actress Minna Planer, debts, flights from creditors, and a hunger for Paris and Italy. Paris from 1839 brought hunger of a more literal kind: pawned rings, begging letters, fawning appeals to Meyerbeer, and a hatred of money as “the curse that destroys whatever is noble.” Out of that misery came the first statement of a lifelong faith. Writing to Kietz in 1842, he asked what would have become of him had he not thrown himself “with ever growing faith into the arms of Art,” and added, “I know now who I am.”

Dresden and revolution. The triumph of Rienzi in 1842 made him Kapellmeister at the Saxon court, and the letters of the next years show him striking out “a way markedly different” with The Flying Dutchman, Tannhäuser and Lohengrin. He described the last as the contact between “a metaphysical phenomenon and human nature, and the impossibility that such contact will last.” Self-publishing his scores ruined him, quarrels with the court theatre multiplied, and contempt for the modern stage hardened into politics: “the means we must use is Revolution!” he wrote in 1847. During the May uprising of 1849 he told Minna that he and his comrades were revolutionaries “only in order to construct something on fresh ground.” A warrant followed, and with it exile.

Zurich and the artwork of the future. The Zurich letters, above all to Liszt, Theodor Uhlig and August Röckel, are the workshop of the theoretical writings and the Ring. Their faith is humanist and Feuerbachian. “My God is my art and the principle of beauty, nobility, and truth,” he told Ferdinand Heine in 1849, and against Liszt’s plea that he find salvation in Christ he answered in 1853, “I believe in mankind, and require nothing further.” He imagined the Ring performed in a temporary theatre on the Rhine after the revolution, before a public admitted free, to make clear “the meaning of that Revolution, in its noblest sense.” Yet beside the hope runs a darker refrain: art, he wrote, “begins at precisely the point where life breaks off,” a substitute for the love life denied him. The great letter to Röckel of January 1854 reads the Ring as a drama of love against power, in which Wotan rises “to the tragic heights of willing his own destruction” and the lesson is “We must learn to die.”

Schopenhauer, Wesendonck and Tristan. In December 1854 he told Liszt that Schopenhauer had come “like a gift from heaven,” and that his “final negation of the desire of life” showed “the only salvation possible.” In the same letter he conceived Tristan und Isolde as a monument to a love he had never known. Later letters to Röckel reread his own operas through the new philosophy, finding in them since the Dutchman “the sublime tragedy of renunciation.” His love for Mathilde Wesendonck, his neighbour at the Asyl from 1857, became the living form of this thought. When the household broke apart in 1858 he wrote to her of the only salvation left: “Rest from longing! The stilling of every desire!” In Venice he finished the second act of Tristan, confessing to Bülow that “were I not an artist, I could become a saint.”

The wandering years. From 1859 to 1864 the letters follow him from Lucerne, where Tristan was completed, to Paris and the fiasco of Tannhäuser at the Opéra in 1861, then to Biebrich, where Die Meistersinger began as a kind of rescue, and to Vienna, where Tristan was abandoned after more than seventy rehearsals. His final renunciation of Mathilde, his separation from Minna, mounting debts and a flight from Vienna to escape his creditors brought him by the spring of 1864 close to despair.

Ludwig, Munich and Tribschen. In May 1864 the eighteen-year-old King Ludwig II of Bavaria summoned him to Munich and paid his debts. The letters between them are among the strangest in the collection, ecstatic on both sides; Wagner wrote that the King had been sent to him “by God in order that my belief shall become a religion.” Tristan was performed in 1865, but the death of its Tristan, Ludwig Schnorr, the scandal of his affair with Cosima von Bülow and court hostility forced him out of Munich that December. At Tribschen near Lucerne, where he lived with Cosima from 1866, he finished Die Meistersinger, performed in Munich in 1868, returned to the Ring, married Cosima in 1870, and found in the young Friedrich Nietzsche a disciple who saw him as the renewer of Greek tragedy.

Bayreuth. The festival he had imagined in Zurich took shape in the small Franconian town he chose in 1871 as a neutral place, “a kind of Washington of art.” The letters of the next five years are largely business: fundraising, patrons’ certificates, singers asked to serve “simply and solely” an artistic ideal for expenses only, a near collapse rescued by a royal loan in 1874. The first Ring of 1876 left a large deficit and deep disillusion. His enterprise, he told Heckel, had been a question put to the German public, “Will you?”, and he now assumed that they would not. Nietzsche, who in 1876 still celebrated each May as the anniversary of his “spiritual rebirth,” broke with him in 1878, and Wagner’s letters thereafter speak of him with pained bewilderment. Retreating into Parsifal, which he finished in 1882 and reserved for Bayreuth alone, Wagner spoke of himself as a man looking down on the world “as though from a cloud.” His last letter to Ludwig, from Venice in January 1883, calls the work “my farewell to life.”

Spirituality. The letters show that Wagner’s religious thought was not a late conversion but a lifelong search, and that it was always bound up with art. In Paris and Dresden art itself was his faith. In Zurich that faith took a communal and this-worldly form: love was the only redeemer, and the festival he dreamed of was a religious gathering without a church, answering a need that, as he put it in 1852, “can no longer be ecclesiastically religious.”

Schopenhauer gave this search a metaphysics, and with it an Eastern vocabulary. To Röckel in 1855 he described compassion with all that lives as “the root of all virtue” and “the true secret of redemption,” and wrote that the Buddha “spoke the language which most nearly gives expression to that lofty enlightenment.” “If you wish to find out my religion,” he told Mathilde Wesendonck, “read Usinar,” a legend from the Indian epics. He planned a Buddhist drama, Die Sieger, and in his Venice diary for her wrote that he had “involuntarily become a Buddhist.” Seeing an animal tormented, he told Jakob Sulzer, lifted “the veil of Maya” and gave him an insight into “the essence of life itself.” His love for Mathilde he described in the same terms: love was “the well-spring of my redemption,” and “only inside, within us, only deep down does salvation dwell.”

From the 1860s Christ moves to the centre without the Eastern strand disappearing. Writing to Ludwig on Good Friday 1865, he contrasted the God of power with the God who suffers and dwells in the heart, and in 1873 he said Parzival was meant “to preserve the world’s profoundest secret, the truest Christian faith, nay, to awaken that faith anew.” His Christianity remained heterodox. In 1879 he wrote to Constantin Frantz that the way from man to God “is compassion, and its everlasting name is Jesus,” and in 1880 he told Hans von Wolzogen that they must be “merciless in abandoning the Church and the priesthood” for the sake of a purified Christ. The Brahmin teaching stayed with him: joining an animal-protection society in 1879, he urged that people be reminded of “the Brahman’s great saying, ‘Tat twam asi’ (‘That art thou’),” as a way of ennobling Christianity. Die Sieger was set aside only because, as he wrote in 1882, Parsifal had absorbed it.

The response he wanted from his audience followed from this. From the start he insisted that drama speak to feeling rather than reflection, and in 1853 he wrote, “I do not proffer easy entertainment, I deal in terror and pity.” In 1875 he told his performers that the Greeks could celebrate art in the name of Apollo, but “we no longer had any gods.” By 1880 he called Parsifal “the most sacred of my works,” a drama in which “the most sublime mysteries of the Christian faith are openly presented,” and resolved that it should never be offered “as an amusement.” Bayreuth was to be a consecrated stage, and the experience he hoped for was less conversion than an awakening of compassion. In his last years, having lost hope in Germany and the age, he described his inner life as “a world not of hope but of trust.”

Antisemitism. Hostility to Jews runs through the letters from the 1830s to the end, often joined to his resentment of money, the press and rivals. It sharpened around Judaism in Music (1850), when he told Liszt that his hatred of Jewry was “as necessary to my nature as gall is to the blood,” and he defended the pamphlet’s reissue in 1869. In the Schopenhauer letters he identified Judaism with the worldly optimism he rejected and claimed it had distorted Christianity, and in later letters he blamed Jews, often alongside Jesuits, for the degeneration of German culture. Late letters adopt racial language influenced by Gobineau, and in 1881 he told Ludwig that he considered the Jewish race “the born enemy of pure humanity and all that is noble in man.” At the same time he worked closely with Jewish musicians and impresarios, among them Carl Tausig, Joseph Rubinstein, Angelo Neumann and Hermann Levi, who conducted the first Parsifal, and in 1881 he disclaimed any connection with the organized antisemitic movement then active in Berlin.

Because the collection contains thousands of letters, the table below is intended as a finding aid rather than a replacement for the individual letter pages. Use the filters to narrow the archive by year, month, correspondent, or direction, then open a letter to read the full text.

Note: An asterisk (*) next to the date indicates an exact date for the letter was unavailable and a date has been interpolated from context and ordering.

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Date	From	To	Place	Words	Subject
January 19, 1859	Richard Wagner	Mathilde Wesendonck	Venice	576	Wagner reflects to Mathilde Wesendonck that his poetic conceptions always preceded his experience but that in Tristan idea and experience coincided, declines the Dresden proposal that he stand trial, and reports the Grand Duke of Baden's plan to produce Tristan at Karlsruhe on 6th September.
January 23, 1859	Richard Wagner	Hans von Bülow	Venice	595	Wagner tells Bülow of Liszt's hurtful misreading of his humorous letter about Dingelstedt, concluding that he must always exercise caution with Liszt, who does not share his humour. He reports progress on Tristan Act II, plans to finish Act III by May, and asks Bülow to keep secret the Grand Duke of Baden's plan for a Karlsruhe premiere on 6 September.
January 23, 1859	Richard Wagner	Hans von Bülow	Venice	393	Wagner tells Bülow that Liszt has taken offence at his humorous letter, resolves on more reserve with him, and reports that part of the second act of Tristan goes to Härtel's and that the Grand Duke of Baden plans the first performance at Karlsruhe on 6th September.
January 25, 1859	Richard Wagner	Minna Wagner	Venice	1,884	Wagner describes his crowded working day and confides, in strict secrecy, that the Grand Duke of Baden will receive him at Karlsruhe for Tristan without consulting Dresden, fixing 6 September for their reunion after Minna's summer cure. He reassures her about her heart condition, plans to profit from his works and petition the Bundestag if the new Saxon Minister of Justice refuses him, and reports Bülow's telegram on the Berlin Lohengrin success.
January 25, 1859	Richard Wagner	Albert Niemann	Venice	1,764	Encouraging Niemann to sing Rienzi in Hanover in his own way rather than imitate Tichatschek's vocal display, Wagner analyses the character: a desire for vengeance for his murdered brother purified into visionary patriotism, set against Adriano, who sinks back into vendetta. He traces Rienzi's development scene by scene, from his outburst at the nobili to his prayer and final scene with Irene.
January 25, 1859	Hans von Bülow	Richard Wagner	Berlin	1,114	Bülow's detailed report on the first Berlin Lohengrin, a success despite what he calls an organized hostile faction in the audience. He criticizes the cuts, Taubert's hurried tempi and the mulish orchestra, assesses each singer from Johanna Wagner's Ortrud to Formes's Lohengrin, urges Wagner to write a line of thanks to Formes, and hints at the press storm raging over his own concert.
January 25, 1859	Richard Wagner	Albert Niemann	Venice	595	Wagner explains to Albert Niemann the character of Rienzi—a personal vendetta purified into exalted patriotism—contrasting him with Adriano, who sinks back into family ties and revenge, and urges Niemann to make the opera popular.
January 28, 1859	Richard Wagner	Cäcilie Avenarius	Venice	553	Wagner tells his sister Cäcilie that Father Geyer's photographed portrait stands on his desk, attributes the troubles of recent years to Minna's grave illness while resolving to treat her gently, and asks Eduard's advice on publishing the Ring poem as a literary work.
February 1, 1859	Richard Wagner	Karl Klindworth	Venice	543	Wagner tells Klindworth of his difficult negotiations with Härtel's over the Ring scores and piano arrangements, describes slow work on the instrumentation of the second act of Tristan, and urges him to give up piano teaching in London and become a kapellmeister.
February 5, 1859	Hans von Bülow	Richard Wagner	Berlin	1,138	Bülow explains the delay in sending Wagner's arrears of royalties, reports that Lohengrin's second Berlin performance drew a more attentive house than any Tannhäuser, and recounts the cowardly evasions of the critic Kossak and the suppression of Stahr's Lohengrin article. He relieves his feelings about the press, previews his combative third orchestral concert with the Faust Overture, and adds that Cosima wept with joy over Lohengrin.
February 5, 1859	Hans von Bülow	Richard Wagner	Berlin	901	Roused at two in the morning by Wagner's telegram, Bülow reports how he coaxed Goldstein into wiring a further loan of one hundred and fifty reichstalers to Venice. He describes the public clamour for Lohengrin despite its hoarse Elsa and Lohengrin, a forthcoming pamphlet against the Berlin critics, and boldly asks Wagner to let him perform the Tristan Prelude in Prague, if Wagner will compose an ending for it.
February 5, 1859	Richard Wagner	Anton Pusinelli	Venice	1,692	Lamenting the Dresden gossip that undoes Pusinelli's care of Minna, Wagner asks about the proposed summer cure and wants her to complete it alone, since Saxony is pressing Austria to expel him from Venice and he must finish Tristan undisturbed. He reluctantly accepts a cheap sale of the early operas' rights, promises Kriete repayment, and offers to make Pusinelli his heir.
February 6, 1859	Richard Wagner	Hans von Bülow	Venice	453	Enraged by the Saxon Government's demand for his expulsion from Venice, Wagner tells Bülow he has appealed to Archduke Maximilian to protect his work on Tristan, asks him to find a young enterprising publisher for The Rhinegold, and sends warm words to Cosima.
February 7, 1859	Richard Wagner	Minna Wagner	Venice	1,236	Wounded by Minna's taking offence at a letter about Dresden gossip, Wagner regrets ever meddling and begs her to shut her ears to reports from X and others. He confesses deep weariness of life, illness, fever and swollen legs, says only Pusinelli reconciles him to her stay in Dresden, wishes she had gone to Weimar instead, and mentions a 10 louis d'or remittance from Mannheim.
February 10, 1859	Richard Wagner	Minna Wagner	Venice	2,532	Wagner reports his letter to Lüttichau as a last attempt to learn the King of Saxony's intentions without standing trial, weighs Vienna, Strassburg and Paris as future homes, and compares his sunless Grand Canal rooms with Karl's noisy Riva attic. He mentions Moscow interest in his operas, the shortage of Tannhäuser scores, Bülow's Berlin triumphs and Liszt's dejection, tells the saga of his cigars, and on the 11th thanks Minna movingly for her rug and urges her to forgive the past.
February 10, 1859	Richard Wagner	Hans von Bülow	Venice	33	Wagner permits Bülow to perform the Tristan Prelude in Prague but tells him he must write a concert ending for it himself.
February 10, 1859	Richard Wagner	Minna Wagner	Venice	323	Wagner tells Minna he has appealed to Lüttichau as his last attempt to learn what he may expect from Dresden, reports Hülsen's fury at the "impertinent success" of Lohengrin in Berlin, and laments the ingratitude Liszt suffers in Weimar.
February 15, 1859	Richard Wagner	Joseph Tichatschek	Venice	656	From Venice, where he is spending all his energy on finishing Tristan, Wagner thanks Tichatschek for championing his works but gently reproaches him for avoiding the ailing Minna in Dresden, asking his friends to ease her troubled life. He refuses ever to submit to an examination in Dresden as the price of a pardon.
February 16, 1859	Richard Wagner	Minna Wagner	Venice	721	Wagner insists Venice is not harming him; his ills come from endless cares, and Minna's calmer letter and Pusinelli's thorough report on her cure have relieved him like a loosened cramp. He wants to stay until the third act of Tristan is composed, dreams of a summer near Lucerne, approves of Schandau, and firmly refuses the four Dresden gentlemen's plan that he submit to a judicial examination.
February 17, 1859	Franz Liszt	Richard Wagner	Weimar	340	Liszt reports that his proposal for a pension has been declined in the proper quarter, though a small sum might later be sent, and suggests that if Germany stays closed Wagner might settle in Paris, where Liszt could visit often. He hopes for a Tristan premiere in September and praises the song Wagner sent.
February 21, 1859	Richard Wagner	Eliza Wille	Venice	1,175	Wagner tells Eliza Wille of his hermit's life in Venice and his intense work on Tristan, which 'will be beautiful' but is eating into him. He has refused to stand trial in Dresden, closing Germany to himself, worries about Minna, calls Mathilde Wesendonck his sole solace, and plans to leave for Switzerland, perhaps Lucerne, after evading Saxon attempts to have him expelled.
February 22, 1859	Richard Wagner	Franz Liszt	Venice	179	Thanking Liszt for a letter that has dispelled his convulsive excitement, Wagner begs him not to send money now but rather his Ideals and Dante scores, and promises to confess his sins at length tomorrow.
February 22, 1859	Richard Wagner	Mathilde Wesendonck	Venice	736	Invoking the Buddhist practices of public confession and the mendicant's grace in accepting alms, Wagner tells Mathilde he means to face his fate without illusion, restraining "the noblest need" of his life and wishing only for others. He renounces Germany with a placid heart, resolves to complete Tristan, plans to orchestrate Act III at Lucerne, confesses his weakness for silk, velvet and fine rooms, and urges her to hear the much-praised Vienna Lohengrin.
February 22, 1859	Richard Wagner	Mathilde Wesendonck	Venice	109	Wagner tells Mathilde Wesendonck he relinquishes Germany calmly, that Archduke Max has suspended his expulsion, and that he will sketch the third act of Tristan in Venice and orchestrate it in Switzerland, perhaps at Lucerne.
February 23, 1859	Richard Wagner	Franz Liszt	Venice	2,375	Wagner admits that Liszt's stern New Year rebuke showed him his own ugliness and longs for inner calm. He explains that he will never submit to a Saxon trial, has asked the King for an exceptional amnesty on health grounds, and may seek a privilege of residence from several German princes; the Grand Duke of Baden plans to invite him secretly to the Carlsruhe Tristan. Härtel's terms for the Ring are unacceptable, and if Germany stays closed he will settle in Paris, provided Liszt visits often.
February 23, 1859	Richard Wagner	Franz Liszt	Venice	1,256	Wagner explains to Liszt his plan to petition the King of Saxony, and failing that a group of German princes, on grounds of health, describes the Grand Duke of Baden's offer to bring him secretly to Karlsruhe for Tristan, and proposes that the Grand Duke of Weimar buy the Nibelungs scores.
February 27, 1859	Richard Wagner	Minna Wagner	Venice	1,486	Swamped by correspondence, Wagner explains why he concealed his threatened expulsion from Venice, describes his health-based appeal to the Archduke and to the Saxon Minister of Justice for amnesty, and laughs at Lüttichau's snub. He now leans toward settling in Paris, considers spending the spring at the Willes' to finish Tristan's third act, and plays a New York offer of 30,000 francs against the Paris director to secure Tannhäuser or Rienzi; he also asks Papa Fischer to advertise for lost Tannhäuser scores.
March 1, 1859	Richard Wagner	Minna Wagner	Venice	915	Wagner mocks a draft letter to the King of Saxony that someone in Dresden proposed he sign, and scorns an invitation from Reissiger's circle to contribute to an Album for the Weber monument. He asks Minna to return the Rheingold score to Frau Ritter and send Paris snuff, reports that his playing of Tristan's second act drove Karl Ritter and Winterberger crazy, and teases her about his vanity.
March 1, 1859	Richard Wagner	Breitkopf & Härtel	Venice	213	Wagner tells Breitkopf & Härtel he would welcome their purchase of the rights in Rienzi, The Flying Dutchman and Tannhäuser, and asks them, without fee, to engrave the full score of Tannhäuser, whose autographed edition is exhausted.
March 2, 1859	Richard Wagner	Mathilde Wesendonck	Venice	559	In high spirits over the second act of Tristan, which Karl Ritter and Alexander Winterberger have been playing to him and which he feels eclipses all his earlier works, Wagner protests the purity of his will against the clouds others blow across it, and finds comfort in his guardian angel and the palm that follows the wreath of thorns. He recounts a melancholy excursion to Treviso, where he remembered only dust and tortured horses, and glides with this letter "away into the night, where dust and torment vanish."
March 2, 1859	Richard Wagner	Mathilde Wesendonck	Venice	76	Wagner tells Mathilde Wesendonck that, as Ritter and Winterberger play it over to him, he finds the second act of Tristan so beautiful that all his earlier works must give place to it.
March 4, 1859	Richard Wagner	Karl Klindworth	Venice	278	Wagner tells Klindworth that he is considering a five-month engagement in New York to conduct his operas with a German company, on condition that Klindworth is appointed second conductor at 2,000 dollars, and asks him to keep the orchestral sketches of Siegfried for now.
March 4, 1859	Hans von Bülow	Richard Wagner	Berlin	1,334	Bülow celebrates the triumph of his 27 February concert, where Liszt's Ideale under Liszt himself silenced the opposition and avenged the Liszt concert of 1855, and describes the rest of a programme that included his own Cain prologue and Wagner's Faust Overture. He reports that Lohengrin has stalled after three performances, announces his Prague trip, and defends his arrangement of the A major close of Tristan.
March 8, 1859	Richard Wagner	Hans von Bülow	Venice	155	Wagner tells Bülow he will leave Venice for Lucerne to compose the third act of Tristan undisturbed, may winter in Paris or New York, and regrets having allowed a concert ending to be made for the Tristan Prelude.
March 9, 1859	Richard Wagner	Minna Wagner	Venice	2,107	Wagner withdraws his last complaint, rejoicing in Minna's improving health, and explains why he has declined the Willes' invitation in favour of a spring near Lucerne to finish Tristan's third act. He sets out his terms for the New York offer and his ultimatum to the Théâtre Lyrique over Tannhäuser or Rienzi, dreams of a comfortable Paris home and a rentier's income, and deals with the Meser score tangle, Kriete, Müller and Härtels.
March 10, 1859	Richard Wagner	Myrrha Wesendonck	Venice	644	A tender letter to the Wesendoncks' young daughter Myrrha, thanking her for her copy-book letter and gently consoling the family on the death of little Guido: her brother Karl, Wagner assures her, is "every tiny bit Guido over again," only with another face, and has taken up the task of laughing and crying for him.
March 10, 1859	Richard Wagner	Mathilde Wesendonck	Venice	322	Enclosed with the letter to Myrrha, a note to "Mamma" announcing that the second act of Tristan, the great musical problem, is finished and solved as never before, "the acme of my art till now." Wagner outlines his route to Lucerne via Verona, Milan and the Gotthard, professes growing indifference to the world's verdict, describes the tearful farewells of Winterberger and Karl Ritter, and praises the way Mathilde weaves her fairy-tales out of Nature.
March 10, 1859	Richard Wagner	Wilhelm Fischer	Venice	392	Wagner's last letter to Fischer asks him to make the music-dealer M. account for ten missing copies of the Tannhäuser score, which were Wagner's private property and not to be sold, and to supply a written declaration that no more copies remain, so that Härtels will undertake an expensive new edition.
March 10, 1859	Richard Wagner	Mathilde Wesendonck	Venice	149	Wagner tells Mathilde Wesendonck that he has finished the second act of Tristan, the highest point his art has yet reached, and describes Winterberger's tearful farewell before his own departure for Switzerland.
March 23, 1859	Richard Wagner	Minna Wagner	Venice	835	On the eve of leaving Venice, flustered and sleepless, Wagner allots Minna 100 louis d'or from Härtels and urges her to take a finer lodging and carriage drives at Schandau. He explains that he has declined Frau Ritter's subsidy after learning of the family's Crimean War losses, and outlines his route via Milan and the Gotthard to Lucerne, where he will finish Tristan in solitude.
March 23, 1859	Richard Wagner	Minna Wagner	Venice	228	Wagner tells Minna that he has renounced the Ritters' subsidy for good after learning of their losses in Russia, and that Julie Ritter's warm response makes the end of their relationship almost more beautiful than its beginning.
March 25, 1859	Richard Wagner	Franz Liszt	Milan	278	Writing from Milan, tired from the Brera, the Last Supper and the cathedral, Wagner announces that he is moving to Lucerne to compose the third act of Tristan by the lake he loves, and mentions a bone to pick with Liszt's cousin in Vienna.
March 25, 1859	Richard Wagner	Mathilde Wesendonck	Milan	664	Having taken leave of "dreamy Venice," Wagner recounts to Mathilde a wondrous dream in which she soared up in her garden to catch two doves, his messengers, in a laurel wreath and was bathed in blinding radiance. He describes visits to the Brera, where Crespi's St Stephen moves him to praise the newer art's positive depiction of world-renunciation in the martyr's death, finds Milan Cathedral imposing to tediousness, and looks forward to Lucerne and her visit there.
March 25, 1859	Richard Wagner	Franz Liszt	Milan	150	From Milan, Wagner tells Liszt that he has chosen Lucerne for composing the third act of Tristan undisturbed and that his Erard has gone on ahead.
March 30, 1859	Richard Wagner	Minna Wagner	Lucerne	1,057	Arrived at Lucerne, Wagner scolds Minna for her Berlin trip against Pusinelli's advice, since Frau Frommann found her still agitated, and urges her to take good lodgings at Schandau and live for her health. He describes a snowy sleigh crossing of the St. Gotthard, his rooms in the empty Schweizerhof annexe, sightseeing at Milan amid Austrian troops, and asks her to press lawyer Schmidt so that Härtels can clinch their offer.
April 6, 1859	Franz Liszt	Richard Wagner	Weimar	319	Liszt welcomes Wagner to Lucerne, reports that Carlsruhe fears Tristan will not be ready in time, and promises to set the Nibelungen affair right once Tristan is performed. He outlines his spring travels to Löwenberg and Leipzig and his music for the Schiller festival play.
April 7, 1859	Richard Wagner	Mathilde Wesendonck	Lucerne	94	Newly arrived at Lucerne, Wagner sends "Saint Mathilde" a hasty note: his Erard piano has crossed the Gotthard without going out of tune, the weather is heavenly, his solitude beneficial, the finches warbling blithely, and he hopes to resume Tristan the next day.
April 7, 1859	Richard Wagner	Julie Ritter	Lucerne	337	Wagner reassures Julie Ritter about her son Karl, whom he finds noble and pure, advises giving him freedom and perhaps a stay in Rome, and asks that a copy of his Wieland sketch be sent to Caroline Röckel.
April 7, 1859	Richard Wagner	Clara Wolfram	Lucerne	347	Wagner explains to his sister Clara that he treats Minna with kindly deception and soothing influence, provides her amply with money for a summer cure at Schandau, and hopes to resume their household in the autumn; solitude, he adds, has benefited him.
April 9, 1859	Richard Wagner	Minna Wagner	Lucerne	1,197	Installed alone in the Schweizerhof annexe, Wagner describes his daily routine of work on Tristan, the delayed arrival of the piano over the Gotthard, and the Swan rug sent on from Zurich. He doubts the Berlin Lohengrin, praises reports from Vienna, and sharply warns Minna against her intimacy with the L.s, whom he calls sponging ragamuffins, and against the dreadful Julius, urging her off to Schandau and then to Karlsruhe.
No letters found.

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