My Lord Redern,
May I entreat Your Excellency most humbly to deign to consider the following request concerning an opera of my own composition for which I herewith solicit the honour of a first performance at the Royal Court Theatre in Berlin. It is a relatively short opera, entitled “The flying Dutchman”, or rather it is not intended to fill a whole evening in the theatre, but to be given with a short ballet or a short play. The text of the same will be sent to Your Excellency, in accordance with my instructions, in a few days’ time, and no asseverations on my part will be necessary to assure Your Excellency how fortunate I should deem myself if both the basic idea of the libretto and the manner of its execution were to seem worthy of your approval.
Since, for the rest, I cannot but suppose that my name as a composer is as yet unknown to Your Excellency, I believe that it would not be prejudicial to my interests to refer Your Excellency to Herr G. Meyerbeer who, as far as I know, is at present staying in Berlin and to whom I have the inestimable good fortune of being known personally. I may flatter myself that Herr Meyerbeer will not refuse Your Excellency any information that you may desire. Should this information prove to be such that Your Excellency could then decide to accord me the honour I have sought for my opera, I would entreat Your Excellency most humbly to assign its performance to the autumn of this year, for which purpose I would then submit the full score of the work, which I intend to have completed by the end of the summer.
In commending myself most respectfully to Your Excellency’s inestimable favour, I take the liberty of beseeching Your Excellency most humbly to accept the assurance of the profound admiration with which I venture to sign myself
Your Excellency’s
most devoted servant,
Richard Wagner.
Source: Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, trans. and ed. Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (W. W. Norton & Company, 1988), No. 38