Your kind letter pleased and gratified me greatly. Accept my thanks for your so unusually considerate friendship.
I regret that you are still obliged to keep up such a “lively” correspondence with Schott, as I can only infer this to mean that you are meeting with difficulties.
. . . Here (Vienna) I at once met with great vexation. But now, thanks to my extraordinary efforts, everything is going well. But it will not be easy to bring the receipts up to the desired amount. The calamity here is so great at present that my friends have not dared to ask the same high prices that they did three years ago; instead of twenty-five florins at that time, they could venture on only twenty, and so on in proportion, so that the highest gross receipts to be expected will be twelve thousand florins. Everywhere astonishment reigns that at a time of general stagnation, when many theatres have been obliged to close their doors on account of lack of an audience, the name of R. W. has been able to work such a miracle.
In Pesth it will not be very different, and I shall be obliged to renounce all idea of large receipts; however, I have resolved to equalise matters by repeating the concert in Vienna on March 4, namely, at lower prices, in order that the less-well-off public (who are pining for this) will be able to come.
It is to be assumed that this second concert will also be filled to overflowing, and that the receipts will prove satisfactory, as the expenses will be very little.
Within the next few days I shall suggest to the King, from obligatory considerations, a private performance of the same numbers in the Residenz Theatre. Whether he accepts this or not, I intend in any case to return by way of Munich in order to see and hear the artist pair Vogel.
My wife joins me in greetings and thanks!
I remain always
Your deeply grateful
Richard Wagner.
Vienna, February 27, 1875