Birthday greetings from Richter to Cosima Wagner at Christmas 1875 and the naming of his daughter Richardis put the finishing touches to healing the rift, or, as Cosima herself described it, the ‘passing illness’ of the previous summer. Richter was once again the ‘alte Geselle’, the disciple of old. The Wagners were to pay another visit to Vienna before concentrating entirely on Bayreuth during the momentous year of 1876 and it proved to be Wagner's last visit to the city. In order to show how pleased he had been with the chorus in Lohengrin, he offered to return in March 1876 to conduct a benefit performance for them of the work that Richter had been conducting in the meantime. Jauner feared that Wagner would demand extra rehearsals but to everyone's surprise none took place. He arrived during the evening of 1 March, conducted the opera on the following evening and, by the next day, was gone for good. Although Richter recorded in his diary that there was no rehearsal prior to the performance, Max Morold contradicts this with an account of a short, ‘top-and-tail’ session where difficult corners were tackled. This was to be the first and last time that Wagner ever conducted Lohengrin. According to Joseph Sulzer's account, Richter's role was as follows.

Richter himself said he was elsewhere: