Rienzi in April/May 2009 and at the Deutsche Oper Berlin and Oper Leipzig in April/May 2010. In July 2013, the bicentennial year of Wagner's birth, performances of all three of Wagner's early operas, including "Rienzi", took place for the first time at Bayreuth, at the Oberfrankenhalle. This performance trimmed some parts, including the second-act ballet. The Australian premiere was a concert performance by Melbourne Opera in December 2013, as part of the bicentennial celebrations. The opera opens with a substantial overture which begins with a trumpet call (which in act 3 we learn is the war call of the Colonna family)
Rienzi followed on 27 January 1879 by the first UK performance at Her Majesty's Theatre in London. The overture was the first work performed at the inaugural Henry Wood Promenade Concert at the Queen's Hall in London in August 1895. A staging at the English National Opera in London, produced by Nicholas Hytner in 1983, placed the hero in the context of 20th-century totalitarianism. A production by David Pountney at the Vienna State Opera in 1999 set the work in the "near future". Of this production Pountney wrote: Other contemporary productions have been rare. Performances were given at the Theater Bremen