[...] Are you industrious? Well, I am at last to become so once more. I haven't written a note for a year and a half! Just now I have to prepare a big choral work (it must occupy at least half an hour) for the approaching festival of Men's Choirs in Dresden. I have taken as my subject-matter the Love-Feast of the Apostles, with the outpouring of the Holy Ghost. I next intend to reduce my Rienzi to a single evening's length. The provincial theatres find the division into two evenings a great obstacle. I cherish high hopes (just as one always does!) for a new opera of which I have the libretto complete at present. It has three acts and is based on a mingling of the Tannhäuser saga with that of the song tournament of Wartburg. I shall attack the composition this summer. [...]
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Vol. 1, selected and ed. Wilhelm Altmann, trans. M. M. Bozman (J. M. Dent & Sons, 1927), No. 87