[...] If anything could induce me to push Rienzi at this time of day, it could only be, as you will understand, the desire to make a good income quickly, thus relieving my impecunious and destitute condition. In itself I look on this revival as an anachronism, and quite premature at present. After the opera's recent great success in Dresden I was for a time in hopes that I should make enough to supply my present wants by the rapid sale of the work. These hopes, however, have been in the main disappointed. [...] Whether I ever produce my Nibelungs is, in the deepest sense, a matter of supreme indifference to me, but in any case I shall complete it, for I do not nourish my inspiration and strength for works of this kind on hopes for the realisation of which I should need the aid of the Grand Duke of Weimar and Dingelstedt! [...]
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Vol. 2, selected and ed. Wilhelm Altmann, trans. M. M. Bozman (J. M. Dent & Sons, 1927), No. 380