Your Excellency may perhaps think it strange to hear a man's name for the first time and at the same time to be approached by him with so considerable a petition as that which is the occasion of my letter. Although I am a Saxon I have never, I regret to say, been fortunate enough to find a suitable occasion of laying any circumstantial proofs of my artistic capacities before the public of my Fatherland. None the less, even now when I have just succeeded in getting into direct negotiations with the management of the Académie Royale de Musique in Paris on the question of an operatic subject to be composed especially for that theatre, I am hoping at the same time that I may have the inestimable good fortune of attaining an equally happy result of my labours there where I must ever account it the highest and most flattering honour to see my endeavours received with favour.
I take the liberty of addressing myself to Your Excellency, patron of the arts and Intendant of His Majesty the King's Court Theatre, with the humble plea that you will graciously consider the petition which I herewith confidently urge upon Your Excellency's attention. As it has always been one of my dearest hopes one day to see a great dramatic work of my own composition produced at the Court Theatre in the capital of my native land, I have recently devoted my chief energies to completing an opera, the chief roles of which I designed especially for certain singers of exceptional talent who have the great good fortune to be members of the Dresden Court Theatre. This work, a grand opera in five acts entitled Rienzi, has just been completed and I now hasten to send Your Excellency the score and book of the same in the hope that you may be pleased to accord it a first performance at the Court Theatre. [...] May I further be allowed the liberty of making mention of a certain circumstance which may perhaps be worthy of Your Excellency's notice? When I finally resolved to write a grand opera with a view to offering it to the Dresden Court Theatre for first performance, I heard that the scheme for building a new and splendid playhouse there was shortly to be accomplished. What I was told of the magnificent scale upon which this building was to be completed suggested to me the idea of elaborating the décor of my opera in a manner commensurate with the possibilities of such a playhouse. A glance over the libretto of my opera would convince Your Excellency that it is perhaps just the work to find place in the repertoire for the Court Theatre to be chosen and staged after the opening of the new playhouse. [...]
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Vol. 1, selected and ed. Wilhelm Altmann, trans. M. M. Bozman (J. M. Dent & Sons, 1927), No. 51