This time you may again accuse me, Theodore, of not having written to you for a long time. My God, what have I not been working at! First there is my job, which often robs me of every spare hour for weeks together, and then there is the composition of my opera, which I shall have finished by New Year's Eve. I am now at the focus of my talent; I do everything with ease and success.
As regards the production I have now made up my mind. It will do well here at the end of February '36. In many respects I could nowhere produce the opera more advantageously than here, with two excellent tenors and an Isabella such as I could seldom better, our real genius of a Pollert. So I shall produce my Liebesverbot for the first time here and then, please God, launch my opera. That is my scheme of operations.
I live here as if in prison. Oh, things must change soon; this bourgeois effort and struggle to keep body and soul together must end soon. Only this much more: if anyone now turns up his nose at my love for Minna, I will defend it. I am with her and writing to you.
Laube is going to Berlin for the winter. I am very pleased with the preface to the second volume of his Charakteristiken. You often ask after Schmale; he left here a long time ago. You would hardly know our theatre again. Everything is new but good.
Richard Wagner
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Volume 1, ed. Altmann/Hull (London: Dent, 1927), No. 29