RICHARD WAGNER

DRESDEN, January 14th, 1849



11.

(TO HERR VON ZIGESAR)

HIGHLY ESTEEMED SIR,

Accept my most hearty thanks for your kind letter, which has
given me much joy. I confess that I scarcely thought this the
time to gain sympathy for my works, less on account of the
present political commotion, than because of the absence of all
real earnestness, which has long ago disappeared from the public
interest in the theatre, giving way to the most shallow desire
for entertainment. You yourself are anxious about the reception
of my opera at the hands of the Weimar public, but as at the same
time you evince your sympathy for that work so cordially, you
will, I may hope, agree with me when I openly charge your
excellent predecessors with the responsibility for your being
obliged to suspect the public of an ill-regulated and shallow
taste. For as we educate a child, so he grows up, and a
theatrical audience is equally subject to the effects of
training. But I am unjust in accusing Weimar of a fault which
during the last generation has invaded all the theatres in the
world, the more so as I lay myself open to the suspicion of doing