A telegram from America[1] reports that the march has met with great success. The arrival of individual delegates—Herr von Baligand, Lesimple. The former explains how it came about that, while R.’s operas always draw full houses, the performances given for the benefit of Bayreuth brought in only three hundred thalers. After the King, at Herr B.’s request, had ordered the performance, nothing occurred for a long time; when pressed, the artistic director, on the very day of the performance, announced the cancellation of “Lalla Rookh”[2] (the least attended of all the old repertory pieces), on account of the illness of a singer, substituted “Tannhäuser”, and printed in small letters at the bottom of the bill: “for the purchase of patronage certificates!” R. is uneasy about Fräulein Scheffsky, fearing that he has committed a folly in choosing her for Sieglinde.
[1] Dispatch from America: New York, no date, dispatched from Bayreuth on May 12, 1876, 8 o’clock: ‘Herald writes: march will live until the next Centennial, tremendous applause, Steinway,’ transmitted incorrectly; corrected here.
[2] ‘Lalla Rookh’: a verse epic by Thomas Moore, Irish poet; translated into German as ‘Lalla Rukh the Mongolian Princess’ by Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué in 1822 and by J. L. Witthaus in 1823, and widely imitated; among other things, it served as the model for Das Paradies und die Peri by Robert Schumann, 1843, and for the opera Feramors by Anton Rubinstein, 1863, with text by Julius Rodenberg; the opera most frequently performed was that by Félicien David, 1862.
Revised English translation by Jo Cousins [© Jo Cousins | WAGNER Salon]