My Most Honoured Friend, it is long since you heard anything from me, and perhaps you were already under the happy delusion that I was no more. However, I still exist, though separated by some hundred miles from civilised Germany. You can well imagine with what mad longing I cling to every remaining hope derived from that far world, and you are among those hopes.
You know that at the end of last year I finished an opera, Das Liebesverbot oder die Novize von Palermo, on Shakespeare's Measure for Measure. I do not think the opera bad, though it is unsuitable on German soil both in subject and in music, and the unknown German composer has enough to struggle against already. Leipzig I barred from the first. I do not know where I should try to place it, and I now feel driven to make a bold bid for Paris.
Some time ago I sent Scribe the plan of a great operatic subject, Die hohe Braut, in five acts, and asked him to lend his name and patronage to it. I have had no answer as yet. Now I should like to send my comic opera direct to the manager of the Opera Comique. Could you tell me a good way of attaining my end with them, or at least give me the exact address of the entrepreneurs and the easiest way of getting at them? If you yourself should light upon the most appropriate method of conducting the affair, I would send the score to you at Leipzig so that you may know what you have to deal with.
What is your opinion of it, roughly, and what may be hoped for it? I earnestly implore an answer.
Richard Wagner
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Volume 1, ed. Altmann/Hull (London: Dent, 1927), No. 39