"A Communication to my Friends" was written at a period which was turbulent even in the context of Wagner's very eventful life. Having been forced to flee Dresden, where he had been "Kapellmeister" at the Opera House, following his involvement with the May Uprising of 1849, he lived in exile, based in Zürich. He had no regular income and, although he had completed the score of his opera "Lohengrin", he had at first little prospect of getting it performed, or of furthering his career as a composer. During the period 1849–51 he in fact wrote hardly any music, instead concentrating on writing a series of essays in which he expounded his ideas about music and the future of opera. These included "Art and Revolution" (written in Paris in 1849), "The Artwork of the Future" (1849), "Jewishness in Music" (1850) and the book-length "Opera and Drama" (1851).