Rienzi hymns, processions and the musical clash of arms". Cosima Wagner recorded Wagner's comment in her diary for 20 June 1871: "Rienzi" is very repugnant to me, but they should at least recognize the fire in it; I was a music director and I wrote a grand opera; the fact that it was this same music director who gave them some hard nuts to crack – that's what should astonish them. Thus the work has remained outside today's Wagner canon, and was only performed at the Bayreuth Festival in 2013, staged by Matthias von Stegmann. Although the composer disclaimed it, it
Rienzi Ley advocated using a modern composition to open the Party Rallies in Nuremberg, but Hitler rejected this idea: "You know, Ley, it isn't by chance that I have the Party Rallies open with the overture to "Rienzi". It's not just a musical question. At the age of twenty-four this man, an innkeeper's son, persuaded the Roman people to drive out the corrupt Senate by reminding them of the magnificent past of the Roman Empire. Listening to this blessed music as a young man in the theater at Linz, I had the vision that I too must someday succeed in uniting