I have been so overwhelmed with work and affairs during the past two months that I am sure my leave is now a necessity for reasons of health and for relaxation from mental and physical exertion. In the middle of May, Reissiger went on leave and I had to shoulder practically alone all the duties of both church and theatre. Added to this, I received the royal command to compose a choral work for the unveiling of the memorial to King Frederick Augustus. I had scarcely finished it when I had to set to work on a small oratorio which I had promised for the great Festival of Men's Choirs in Dresden. Busy as I was with ordinary duties, I had 14 days to complete a long and serious piece of composition, the text of which I had to devise myself. My nerves became so overstrung during this period that I often sat and cried for a quarter of an hour at a time. This composition, first put off and finally finished almost too late, had then to be rehearsed (my muscles have not yet quite recovered from the effects of the strain), and I also had all kinds of other rehearsals to conduct as Director of the local Choral Society. But the result richly repaid me. The Festival was magnificent in the truest sense of the word, especially the performance in the Church of Our Lady. Imagine the effect of a choir of 1200 men's voices, all fully trained, on a platform occupying almost the whole nave of the church, supported by an orchestra of 100 instruments! There has never been anything like it in any church anywhere. This day I again bore away the prize. The Holy Ghost was poured out upon my Love-Feast of the Apostles and we were all transported. Afterwards wherever I turned among the mass of singers gathered from all parts of Saxony I was met with "vivas" and "hurras" and the uproar seemed as if it would never cease.
To tell truth, my negligence in not writing to you must be laid to the door of an extraordinary feeling of despondency which descended on me like lead with the news of our dear Lehrs' death. For a whole week after the receipt of this news my brain and my whole being felt apathetic, stunned. It weighed upon me like a curse, so that I could scarcely lift my head. When I reflect that I looked on, and was obliged to look on, while this poor brave friend of mine was slowly destroyed before my eyes by the Fate that dogs every noble and modest soul! Oh, my dears, I seemed to see that Paris of yours as a monstrous den of assassins, where we with our innocent ambition are quietly and unnoticeably done to death!
Richard Wagner
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Volume 1, ed. Altmann/Hull (London: Dent, 1927), No. 96