The Ring Cycle as Imagined by Felix Mendelssohn:
“My best thanks also for your last letter. Do you know, I think your suggestion as to the Nibelungen most luminous? It has been constantly in my head ever since, and I mean to employ my first leisure day in reading over the poem, for I have forgotten the details and can only recall the general colouring and outlines which seem to me gloriously dramatic. Will you kindly communicate to me your specific ideas on this subject? The poem is evidently more present to your memory than to mine. I scarcely remember what your allusion means as to the sinking into the Rhine. Can you point out to me the various passages which struck you as particularly dramatic when the idea first occurred to you ? and, above all, say something more definite on the subject, as the whole tone and colouring, and characteristics, take my fancy strongly; therefore I beg of you to do so, and soon, too; it will be an essential service to me. Refer entirely to the poem itself, for before your letter can I shall certainly have read it, though I shall not less eagerly expect your opinion Accept my for this happy thought as for all else.”—Felix Mendelssohn in letter to Fanny Hensel, 1840