To-day I am sending you the finished first two acts of The Valkyrie. It is an intense satisfaction to me to know that they will presently be in your hands, for I know that there is no one so sympathetic to my work as you. I am apprehensive about the weighty content of Act II. It comprises two crises, so powerful and significant that it would really provide sufficient matter for two acts, yet the two are so interdependent, the one leads so directly up to the other, that it would be quite impossible to separate them. If it is only presented as I require, if all my intentions are fully understood, it must certainly cause a quite unprecedented wave of strong emotion. But a thing like this is really only written for such as have some staying power, that is for no one! I cannot be influenced by the fact that the weak and incapable will complain. However, whether everything has turned out well even according to my intention is for you to judge; I could not do it differently. In dispirited and dispassionate hours I was most afraid of Wotan's great scene and especially of his revelation of Fate to Brynhilde; indeed in London I came to the point at one time of wanting to discard the scene altogether. To make up my mind about it I took up the draft again and went through the scene to myself with all the necessary expression. Happily I found by this means that my spleen was unjustified and that, on the contrary, the appropriate rendering produced a truly musical and enthralling effect. In certain passages I have indicated this rendering more precisely, yet much remains to be done and it will be a capital task some day for me to initiate some talented singer and actor into the very heart of my meaning by word of mouth. You will see to the heart of the matter at once. It is the most important scene in the course of the whole great tetralogy and as such probably will soon arouse the necessary interest and remark. I have an increasing hope that I shall have quite finished the last act by Christmas.
You probably know that Semper has an appointment here now. He gives me great delight, an artist through and through and at the same time more likeable as a man than formerly, but as fiery as ever. Karl Ritter is settling here now also. I like him better than ever; his sagacity is immense and I know no young man like him. He really loves you greatly and moreover understands you very well. I recently had an answer from Berlioz to a letter of mine in which I asked him, among other things, to make me a present of all his scores if he could obtain them gratis. This he cannot do now, as his former publisher will not let him have any more free copies. I confess that it would greatly interest me now to go through his symphonies carefully with the scores; have you got them and will you lend them to me? Or would you even give them to me? I would be very grateful, but I should like to have them soon.
America is a horrible nightmare to me. If the New Yorkers should be able to make up their minds some time to offer me a respectable sum I should really be in a dreadfully embarrassing position. If I were to refuse it I should not dare to tell a living soul, for everyone would accuse me of lack of the sense of what is due to my situation. Ten years ago I could have undertaken something of the kind, but now to go so far out of my way merely for the sake of a living would be hard indeed, now when I am just prepared to achieve and to devote myself to what is truly and strictly my metier. I should never in my life be able to finish The Nibelungs. God in Heaven! As for those sums which I might earn in America, people ought to give them to me, without asking anything else of me but to do what I am doing, and which is the best thing that I can do.
Richard Wagner
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Volume 1, ed. Altmann/Hull (London: Dent, 1927), No. 289