Ten days ago we moved into the little country house near the Wesendoncks' villa, for which I have to thank the really immense interest of this friendly family. As you will see, I have got a charming spot in which to live secluded, and when I recollect how long I have been yearning for something of the kind and how difficult it was even to see it as a possibility, I cannot but feel that this good fellow Wesendonck is one of my greatest benefactors. By the way, three weeks ago his wife was delivered of a son, whose voice, they say, has good high notes and whom I have tentatively named "the Youngest Siegfried." The Wesendoncks hope to be able to move out to their estate early in July; their neighbourhood is full of friendly and pleasant promise for me. Well, that is one thing accomplished. I hope very shortly to be able to take up my long-interrupted work again and in any case I shall not leave my charming refuge, be it for any excursion whatever, till Siegfried has come to a full understanding with Brynhilde. So far I have only finished Act I, but that is complete to the last jot and tittle, a great success and more beautiful than all the rest. I was myself astonished that I could have achieved it, for since we were last together I have once more seemed to myself a horribly bungling musician. Only don't let the Grand Duke imagine that I am writing my Nibelungs for him, and that some day he can deck himself with the plumage, while in the meantime he thanklessly leaves the bird that grew it, to languish. I shall find other ways than through this lukewarm prince, to whom for years now I have been sufficiently grateful for nothing. Well, this by way of parenthesis! And yet, joking apart, the Emperor of Brazil has now had me invited to go to him at Rio de Janeiro; I am to be given everything in abundance there. Well then - if not in Weimar, in Rio!!
Richard Wagner
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Volume 1, ed. Altmann/Hull (London: Dent, 1927), No. 334