?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 5,000 - $ 7,500
GRANTING PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE SCENES FROM THE RING WAGNER, RICHARD. Autograph Letter Signed, twice ("Rich Wagner" and "RW"), to an unnamed recipient ("Dear Sir"), in German, granting permission to reproduce scenes from the Ring of the Nibelung by means of his invention, and in a postscript, returning related materials [not present]. 1 page, 8vo, with integral blank; short closed separations at folds with some tissue repairs to terminal page, short closed tear at middle left of first page. Bayreuth, 5 February 1877
". . . [F]or the time being I could not see any advantage for you here. "The permission you mentioned, to be able to [re]produce the scenes from The Ring of the Nibelung for the public by means of your invention, I gladly grant, insofar as this depends upon me. . . ." At the time this letter was written, Wagner was also corresponding with agents of the Leipzig Theater in an effort to bring to that city a production of the Ring. Wagner first granted permission to perform the Ring to August Förster, director of the Leipzig Theater, when the two met in March of 1877 (Neumann, Personal Recollections of Wagner, 1908, p. 30). The recipient of the present letter is probably a photographer or publisher, and the "scenes" in the letter are perhaps the 1876 artworks by Josef Hoffmann that were used to design the sets for the first production.
