Most Honoured Sir, it is now nearly two years since I introduced myself to your notice from Koenigsberg. Since then I have never discharged my debt of thanks to you for having taken up a man quite unknown to you in an extraordinarily friendly manner, for having acceded to my request that you place my composition in your Europa, and for the particular attention you have given my interests. May I now, by way of thanks, intrude upon you with yet greater confidence?
I had resolved to languish in obscurity rather than force my way on to the German stage, and therefore worked out a subject for a big five-act opera especially designed for Paris. I took my subject from Koenig's romance Die hohe Braut. I sent Scribe a French translation with the suggestion that, if the subject pleased him, he should versify it or deal with it in any way he liked, whereupon I would compose the opera and leave him full freedom as to the use of his name and any profits. I then sent him my completed comic opera, Das Liebesverbot oder die Novize von Palermo, after Measure for Measure, and asked him to secure an opinion from Auber or Meyerbeer so that he might judge whether I were capable of composing an opera for Paris.
In June 1837 I received an answer from Scribe which cleared him of earlier negligence and promised what help he could give. I wrote again from Dresden and sent him an earlier copy of the rough sketch for the grand opera on Die hohe Braut, but after that there was silence. Since then my fate has driven me northwards, and now in Siberia my longing to make an appearance in France has reawakened. I must make another bid for it, but I need a middleman accustomed to that world and able to deal with the business direct. Could you tell me some good way of attaining my end with them, or at least get me the exact address of the entrepreneurs of the Opera Comique and the easiest way of getting at them?
I place this amount of trust in your cosmopolitanism, that you will not leave me unnoticed, and I earnestly implore an answer.
Richard Wagner
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Volume 1, ed. Altmann/Hull (London: Dent, 1927), No. 43