The Italian singer and close friend of Brahms has just returned from a trip and writes with hopes of soon meeting the recipient, a Monsieur Wachsel, to catch up.

Alice Barbi began her singing career in the early 1880s, offering recital programs of Schumann and Schubert to widespread acclaim. By the 1890's she had become a personal and musical favorite of Brahms. He praised the supreme steadiness and solid pulse of her interpretations, introduced her to Clara Schumann, and remarked, after hearing her sing his own Lieder, that today I've heard my songs for the first time. The two would travel together and rumors spread about a possible romance, but their relationship seems to have remained platonic. Barbi married the Baron Boris Wolf-Stomersee in 1893.