‘Next year we will do it all differently,’ said Richard Wagner to Richard Fricke after the 1876 Bayreuth Festival, in spite of the fact that the composer had originally intended the cycle to be staged just once in a temporary theatre on the banks of the Rhine, after which both score and theatre would be burnt. Hans Richter had addressed the orchestra when they parted on 30 August 1876 with the words ‘he who is sincere will come back again next year!’, and he was greeted by a chorus of approval. When Richter left Bayreuth on 2 September 1876 for Vienna he recorded that ‘the Master was very moved.’ Little did he know that it would be another twelve years, and five after the composer's death, before he entered the orchestral pit in Bayreuth again. In response to a request from the Leipzig Intendant Dr August Förster, who was eager to stage the Ring, Wagner had replied in September 1876 ‘give me time to present my work once more in a carefully corrected form next year here in Bayreuth.’ The reason that the Festival Theatre would not reopen its doors for another six years was the deficit of 148,000 marks incurred by the events of 1876. Wagner was now forced to consider any means by which he could recoup his losses. This included granting performing rights to other theatres, whose managers sensed they had Wagner at their mercy. Jauner in Vienna, mindful of having released Richter and Materna to Wagner in 1876, secured the city's first Die Walküre in a series of nine performances conducted by Richter between 5 March and 12 April 1877. This was the first occasion, thanks to the introduction to the building of electricity, on which the start of the opera and the end of the intervals were announced by the sounding of an electric bell in the theatre. Leonhard Labatt sang Siegmund, Berta Ehnn was Sieglinde, Emil Scaria was Wotan and Amalie Materna sang Brünnhilde. The city's native son Josef Hoffmann had made the designs for Bayreuth and these were used again in Vienna. The production, by Jauner himself, was a triumph; even Hanslick's review was mild as he conceded defeat in the wave of the ‘thunderous applause’ and acknowledged Wagner as ‘the darling of the public’.