[...] To date “Rienzi” has been performed six times, & although the ticket prices have been increased to a level hitherto unknown in Dresden, the house has always been packed to the rafters: I had the pleasure of observing that at the sixth performance the audience’s enthusiastic acclaim almost surpassed that of the first night, &, as the best proof of my extraordinary success I am told that the local audiences, who in the past have always shown the most insuperable opposition to long performances, have always remained right to the very end of my opera, which lasts until half-past-ten, & that they have followed it with the most intense interest. - As for the style of my composition, people are in agreement to the extent that they generally concede it to bear an exclusively German stamp, without necessarily attributing to it any particular model. The subject matter, as you will see, is powerfully affecting in its basic outline: notwithstanding that fact, I have succeeded in extracting from it a number of more lyrical moments, & it is these in particular which appear to have won for me the audience’s favour. On the whole, however, I am gratified to discover that their applause has been directed less towards individual passages than to the musico-dramatic whole. [...]
Source: Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, trans. and ed. Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (W. W. Norton & Company, 1988), No. 51