Accept my best thanks for your friendly letter. Your warm assurances have strengthened the hopes I reposed in you and I think I may believe that we belong to each other. Would it not be possible for you to repeat the visit, which I so unfortunately missed, this summer? I cannot very well tell you anything at present about the composition, but you must get to know the whole poem. Bülow, through whom you receive these lines, will, I hope, send you at the same time a copy of the poem. Unfortunately I have only my own copy left now as I was too generous from the first with my, intentionally, very small supply of copies. But this will suffice to acquaint you with my intentions. As regards the future performance I can naturally only speak very indefinitely as yet. In any case, however, I would ask you to say nothing further about it. It distressed me to see my overtures to you discussed in the papers even before I got your answer, inaccurately, moreover, as is always the case. These journalists, after all, are a troublesome, obtrusive and indiscreet race against whom one must be on guard. Only I may tell you this much, that I am not thinking of Zurich as the place of production, because everything would be so costly here. I hope before that to be able to go to Germany again and very probably the Grand Duke of Weimar will seize the opportunity of complying with my wishes in a very special manner, so that the production will take place in a specially constructed temporary theatre.
Richard Wagner
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Volume 1, ed. Altmann/Hull (London: Dent, 1927), No. 332