Leaving it entirely in your hands to act about it as you may think best, and either to promote the performance or to let it alone, I remain, with best thanks and high esteem,
Yours very truly,
F. Liszt
October 30th, 1859
My composition to Halm's festival play has been sent through H. von Dingelstedt to Herr Thome, and will probably be performed on the 9th or 10th November. [The festival play was given in Prague under the theater conductor Thome. The music to it was never published. The Weimar archives probably possess the score.] Write and tell me how the matter is settled.
223. To Ingeborg Stark
[A pupil of Liszt's, who afterwards married Liszt's pupil Hans von Bronsart, now General Manager of the Weimar Court theater: she was also known as a composer.]
It is very charming and graceful of you, dear Mademoiselle Inga, to remember the 22nd October so kindly, and I should have thanked you sooner for your letter, which gave me sincere pleasure, had I not been kept to my bed for nearly a week in consequence of much emotion and fatigue.
Through our friend Bronsart I have had some preliminary good tidings of you; you have fulfilled your role of charmer in the best possible manner, and Bronsart is full of raptures about you. But all this is ancient history for you, something like a chapter of Rollin on the history of the Medes,—after whom come the Persians, the Greeks, and the Romans…
For the present it is the turn of Russia, which you are in the way of conquering, and I see from here the enchantment of your admirers of St. Petersburg, who are all ears and all eyes around the piano where you are enthroned.