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My income was so small that I could not even live on it, but I asked nothing more than to be placed on an equal footing with my colleague Reissiger, a prospect which had been held out to me from the beginning. At this juncture Luttichau saw a favourable opportunity for making me feel my dependence on his goodwill, which could only be secured by my showing due deference to his wishes.
Luttichau, however, was quite content to have Reissiger and myself as celebrities, particularly as we got on so well together, and he remained deaf to Hiller's wishes. To me Der Traum in der Christnacht was a great nuisance. I had to conduct it a second time, and before an empty house.
I am not greatly surprised at receiving no letter from Reissiger since last March: he has worked for me that is the best and most honourable answer; besides, it would be foolish on my part to expect that Reissiger, now that his own opera must be fairly engrossing his attention, should be much occupied about me. But what alarms me is the absolute silence of our Devrient!
One story, though well enough known, ought to be mentioned, because it reveals the man whose duties Wagner had to share, and the result of whose faults Wagner had to cure and efface. Wagner met Reissiger on the river bridge one evening at nine o'clock, when the opera ought to have been in full swing with Reissiger at the conductor's desk.
The custom in force at that time that the decision concerning the production of works should not, as a rule, rest with one of the conductors alone, did not tend to make me any less fearful of declaring myself emphatically in favour of this work. In addition to this, it was Reissiger, who, as he had often boasted, was an old friend of Spohr's, whose turn it was to select and produce a new work.
He was always neglected by the management at Dresden, as though they bore him some grudge, and only his Templer was played at all often. My colleague, Reissiger, had to conduct this opera, and as in his absence I always had to take his place, it also fell to my lot on one occasion to direct a performance of this work. This was during the time that I worked at my Tannhauser.
Our manager Luttichau and Conductor Reissiger were among those who had died, Lipinsky had returned to Poland long before, Schubert, the leader, was unfit for work, and everything seemed to me sad and strange. Minister Bar expressed to me the grave qualms he still felt about the amnesty granted me.
Though you may be the most approved friend of Madame Devrient, even you will not have much influence over her. Therefore, I do not know at all what I should say, what I must do, or what advise! My one great hope I place in you, most valued friend! I have written to Herr von Lüttichau, and herewith turn to Reissiger.
And thus, I presume, I again committed an offence against "Lobe and Bernsdorf's eternal laws of truth and beauty," which Reissiger, in his day, was so careful to obey. After I had left Dresden, when this A major symphony came to be performed again under Reissiger, he did not feel at ease about that passage; so he stopped the orchestra, and advised that it should be taken mezzo forte!
I do not lay claim to the first, but I think I have a claim to a place of my own, and least of all do I wish to see myself associated with Reissiger, Curschmann, etc. I know that my aims, my resources, are far beyond theirs, and I hope you will concede this and not accuse me of vanity, which is far from me."
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