If, from this capital city of France, I dare to address Your Majesty thus directly with a petition, my excuse may perhaps be found in the fact that I am a Saxon and Your Majesty's most faithful subject. Born in Leipzig, I visited Dresden as a child with my family, where my stepfather Ludwig Geyer held the post of Court Player at Your Majesty's Court Theatre. I have devoted myself to musical composition and ten years ago had the good fortune to see some instrumental works performed with approbation in my native city.
Since then I have held posts as director of music in several German cities, but feeling that the smaller provincial theatres of Germany were in no way adapted to found the fame of works first produced on their boards, I at length decided to pursue my purpose in Paris. My hopes were strengthened by the friendship of Meyerbeer, whose patronage has already carried me so far that I am now in negotiation with the Academie Royale de Musique over an opera to be composed for that theatre. Yet I have never lost the burning desire to dedicate my best artistic powers to my German fatherland.
Urged by that ambition, I have completed here in Paris a grand opera entitled Rienzi, and I have done so with the express view of offering it for first performance to Your Majesty's Court Theatre. I beg that Your Majesty may be pleased to grant a first performance of my opera Rienzi on your stage at Dresden, and, if Your Majesty graciously accedes to this petition, may also permit me to dedicate the work to you.
Richard Wagner
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Volume 1, ed. Altmann/Hull (London: Dent, 1927), No. 50