Through Herr Mechetti, who writes to me from Leipzig, I have just received an inquiry from the Royal and Imperial Court Opera Theatre of Vienna as to whether I would consider writing a new opera for the approaching German season in Vienna, or whether I have not a new opera completed which could shortly be staged there? I am, indeed, upon the point of beginning to compose a new opera, the first performance of which I have had to promise to the Dresden Theatre for next winter, and for which the scene painter has already been commissioned. I have nevertheless another subject in reserve, the magnificence, freshness and novelty of which promises, I think, a great success. As this subject can, in the first place, give no offence to the censor of Vienna, and, in the second, contains most advantageous roles for the best talents of the Viennese Opera, Madame Hasselt and Herrn Staudigl and Erl, I would willingly give an undertaking to compose it for the first performance in Vienna of the season 1844-5.
As I can offer no new opera, nor one not elsewhere performed, for the coming season, I know nothing which could better answer my own wishes and the interests of the Royal and Imperial Court Opera Theatre than a speedily accomplished production of my opera Rienzi. Everyone acquainted with this work and at the same time with the taste of the Viennese public and the resources of the Viennese Opera, must see that it is likely to be highly successful in Vienna. With the object of adapting it for Austria I have sent the libretto, with the alterations which seemed to me necessitated by the censorship, to Herr Adalbert Prix, he having suggested that I should do so, and I have sent it with the express wish that he should lay it before the censor.
Richard Wagner
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Volume 1, ed. Altmann/Hull (London: Dent, 1927), No. 88