Some years ago I drew your attention to my revision of Gluck's Iphigenia in Aulis. Your answer seemed to me evasive and I did not wish to trouble you further with this matter. In the previous year this revised version was successful again in Hanover and has been talked of in Vienna, and I asked Bülow to make a pianoforte arrangement with a view to publication in this form. He is now giving the finishing touches and it is my business to see that it is speedily published. I flatter myself that by this revision I have helped considerably to popularise Gluck. As I have re-orchestrated the work, the pianoforte arrangement will also be new and independent of the old one.
Now, gentlemen, you are probably as much engaged with me as you care to be for the present and may perhaps shrink from venturing with me on a new publishing enterprise, yet before I approach another publisher I inform you of my project, firstly to give you preference over others, in case you should wish to publish, and secondly because I feel it courteous, in view of our relations hitherto, to offer you the first refusal of a new work.
Richard Wagner
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Volume 1, ed. Altmann/Hull (London: Dent, 1927), No. 350