"The friendly wish you showed to occupy yourself with me once more soon, emboldens me, however, to approach you with regard to the granting of a very big request on my part. My _Rienzi_ has again been given in Dresden with real success, and since I now no longer have any special reason for keeping back this effective work of my youth, I have been inviting the theatres that are friendly to me to take up this opera as quickly as possible; in so doing I am moved by the firm conviction that I am recommending to them a very good and remunerative work. Almost all whom I have approached have fallen in with my wishes. Would you therefore think it too bold of me if I were to request you also to get this score (which you have only to ask for, in my name, of Chorus-master Wilhelm Fischer, of Dresden), without much hesitation and delay, and to see what you can do with this tamed rebel (_mit dem gezähmten Unband_) for my consolation and benefit, while I am finishing _Tristan_?
"I beg you to take this in good part. But in any case I owe you very great thanks, and if you are not angry with me on account of this request, I shall take this as a particularly good sign.
"In any case I may probably hope to receive soon from you a friendly reply; console me also with the assurance that you have forgiven me, and accept in return the assurance of the sincerest devotion and esteem of your most indebted
Lachner at once got the score of _Rienzi_ from Fischer, and wrote to Wagner (October 13) expressing his pleasure at the prospect of an early production of the opera. "In spite, however, of his sincere endeavours," says Röckl, "_Rienzi_ was not put into rehearsal. The reading committee felt the subject to be inadmissible on religious grounds."
In July 1860, von Frays had the idea of giving the _Flying Dutchman_, and wrote to Wagner on the matter. Wagner thought that Lachner had been the moving spirit in this, and thanked him warmly in a hitherto unpublished letter of 20th August 1860.[33] But again Wagner's malignant demon intervened. Von Frays had to resign the Intendantship on account of illness, and his successor abandoned the _Flying Dutchman_ project owing to the expense of the new inscenation. It was taken up again in 1864, and produced on the 4th December, Wagner conducting. Lachner had taken most of the rehearsals, and, though not much in sympathy with the work, he plainly did his best with it.[34]