DEAREST RICHARD,
Over America I had forgotten Hanover, and must not omit once more to point out Wehner to you as the best advocate of your claims there. If the matter of the honorarium can be arranged according, to your wish, he will be the most likely man to do it. From Joachim I have heard nothing since the Dusseldorf festival. Wehner lives at Hanover, and is in particular favour with His Majesty, and he will be most eager to do you a little service if you will ask him in a friendly manner.
At the end of December, about Christmas, I shall be with you.
Then we will feed like the gods on your "Rhinegold" and
"Valkyrie," and I, too, shall contribute some hors d'oeuvre.
F. L.
WEYMAR, September 23rd, 1855.
Write to me, at the first opportunity, whether ten thousand or twelve thousand dollars, with proper guarantee, would be a sufficient honorarium if you were to act as conductor in America for six months.
200.
October 3rd, 1855.
Today, dearest Franz, I send you the two first acts of the "Valkyrie" finished. It is a great satisfaction to me to place them at once in your hands, because I know that no one sympathises with my work as you do. I am anxious for the very weighty second act; it contains two catastrophes, so important and so powerful, that there would be sufficient matter for two acts; but then they are so interdependent, and the one implies the other so immediately, that it was impossible to separate them. If it is represented exactly as I intend, and if my intentions are perfectly understood, the effect must be beyond anything that has hitherto been in existence. Of course, it is written only for people who can stand something (perhaps in reality for nobody). That incapable and weak persons will complain, cannot in any way move me. You must decide whether everything has succeeded according to my own intentions. I cannot do it otherwise. At times, when I was timid and sobered down, I was chiefly anxious about the great scene of Wotan, especially when he discloses the decrees of fate to Brynhild, and in London I was once on the point of rejecting the whole scene. In order to come to a decision, I took up the sketch, and recited the scene with proper expression, when, fortunately, I discovered that my spleen was unjustified, and that, if properly represented, the scene would have a grand effect even in a purely musical sense. The manner of expression I have in places indicated very accurately, but it still remains, and will indeed be my principal task, to introduce a gifted singer and actor to the very core of my intentions by means of personal communication. You, I firmly hope, will find out the right thing at once. For the development of the great tetralogy, this is the most important scene of all, and, as such, it will probably meet with the necessary sympathy and attention.
If you should like nothing at all in my score, you will, at least, be pleased once more with my neat hand-writing, and will think the precaution of red lines ingenious. This representation on paper will probably be the only one which my work will achieve, for which reason I linger over the copying with satisfaction.