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As it soon seemed advisable, in the interests of their own productions, to give direct evidence of their estrangement from me, most of them passed over to the ranks of my enemies. But Uhlig clung to me all the more closely on this account.
Here is a fragment from a letter to Theodor Uhlig, dated Zurich, August 9, '49 "I am living here, helped in communistic fashion by Liszt, in good spirits, and I may say prosperously, according to my best nature; my only and great anxiety is about my poor wife, whom I am expecting here very shortly.
At the Dresden performances in 1845 this ending was cut, but that Wagner reckoned it of the utmost importance is shown by a letter written to Uhlig in 1851: "The reason for leaving out the announcement of the miracle, in the Dresden change, was quite a local one: the chorus was always bad, flat and uninteresting; also an imposing scenic effect a splendid, gradual sunrise was wanting."
I do not know how far this Dresden performance would benefit you in actual circumstances, while you are forcibly prevented from looking after the rehearsals, etc. Uhlig has probably told you that Tichatschek will study the part of Lohengrin with him. Soon after my return Herr von Zigesar intends to give the fourth performance, and for the fifth we shall have Tichatschek.
The score containing this change I sent a year ago to Uhlig, and he wrote to me that he had sent it to Weimar, together with a second score containing the changes in the remainder of the instrumentation. Please ask H. B.; you must have received two scores. Look also in your score at the theatre.
As only packets of a certain weight might be sent in this way, a German translation of Beaumarchais' Figaro, of which Uhlig possessed an ancient copy, enjoyed the singular destiny of acting as ballast for our letters to and fro. Every time, therefore, that our epistles had swelled, to the requisite length, we announced them with the words: 'Figaro brings tidings to-day.
Herwegh, who accompanied me back alone, appeared to divine my state of mind, and shared it by maintaining a similar silence. However, I now wished to have the pleasure of confiding the whole completed work to my friend Uhlig at Dresden. I carried on a regular correspondence with him, and he had followed the development of my plan, and was thoroughly acquainted with every phase of it.
Some of it had to be related earlier in this book to account, so to say, for the way in which Wagner filled up his days; but it will be convenient to summarise it here. Let us begin with a few dates Had studied the Nibelungen saga and sketched the plan of the whole gigantic work much as it now stands. Discusses Siegfried's Death in letters to Uhlig and Liszt.
I wish you could write to him direct on this matter, or else induce him to come here through Uhlig or Fischer. With the performance of "Lohengrin" I am in parts still very much dissatisfied. The chief evil lies, as you say, in the as yet unborn representative of the chief part.
This fury, however, assumed more the character of slander and malice, for our movement had meantime been reduced by a great connoisseur in such things, Meyerbeer, to a clearly defined system, which he maintained and practised with a sure hand until his lamented death. Uhlig had come across my book, Oper und Drama, during the early stages of the furious uproar against me.
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