My affairs were making but little progress, as my operas had been sold to almost every theatre and I had very little left out of the proceeds.  I now heard nothing about all these performances except that they were yielding very little money.  I resigned myself to the fact of bringing out Rienzi, as it was just suited to our inferior class of theatre.  Before offering it for sale, it was desirable to have it performed again in Dresden; but this, it was said, was impossible on account of the impression created by the Orsini outrage.  So I worked on at the instrumentation of the first act of Tristan, and during that time I could not help feeling that most probably other objections, besides those of political captiousness, would be raised against the spread of this work.  I therefore continued my work vaguely and somewhat hopelessly.

In the month of March Frau Wesendonck informed me that she thought of having a kind of musical entertainment in her house to celebrate her husband’s birthday.  She had a predilection for a little serenade music, which, with the help of eight instrumentalists from Zurich, I had arranged during the winter for the occasion of her own birthday.  The pride of the Wesendonck villa was a spacious hall which had been very elegantly decorated by Parisian stucco-workers, and I had once remarked that music would not sound at all badly there.  We had tested it on a small scale, but now it was to be tried on a larger one.  I offered to bring together a respectable orchestra to perform fragments of the Beethoven symphonies, consisting mainly of the brighter parts, for the entertainment of the company.  The necessary preparations required a good deal of time, and the date of the birthday had to be overstepped.  As it was, we had nearly reached Easter, and our concert took place almost at the end of March.  The musical At Home was most successful.  A full orchestra for the Beethoven pieces played with the greatest eclat under my conductorship, to the assembly of guests scattered about in the surrounding rooms, selections from the symphonies.  Such an unprecedented home concert seemed to throw every one into a great state of excitement.

The young daughter of the house presented me at the beginning of the performance with an ivory baton, carved from a design by Semper, the first and only complimentary one I ever received.  There was no lack of flowers and ornamental trees, under which I stood when conducting, and when to suit my taste for musical effect we concluded, not with a loud, but with a deeply soothing piece, like the Adagio from the Ninth Symphony, we felt that Zurich society had indeed witnessed something quite unique, and my friends on whom I had bestowed this mark of distinction were deeply touched by it.