My most highly honoured Friend!
How very much I necessarily regret perceiving, from your letter to my dear wife, that you have been placed in a little uncertainty about me. I should be glad to know, if you would lay a scheme before me, what is the precise authorisation you require from me for an agitation in favour of the Bayreuth idea, in order that I might grant your wish at once. Only, as regards the plan of execution I beg you to set a little store by my experience, concerning alike the German world and myself. Thus I could wish that you would no longer thrust my draft of September 1877 too much into the foreground, as all my experience reaped since then has shewn me that at that time — I admit, not quite unconsciously — I made my reckoning without the host. On the other hand, if I review the hopes aroused in me and all our friends since your own intervention, I can see no other possibility of meeting your wishes at last, than that I should attempt to revive the interest not yet woken since the Festivals of 1876 — as you opine — by a performance of "Parsifal" to be effected as soon as possible. To me this project seems executable in the year 1882, if only I can be left in absolute peace; but that itself — as regards the outward possibility — only if I claim the aid of the King of Bavaria for it.
In circumstances thus assured, after "Parsifal" I think of presenting to my friends one of my older works each year — thus eventually all in series — in model performances, as my artistic testament. As I now am in my 68th year, for the execution of this plan I have to count upon a high and vigorous old age; and therewith I fancy I shall have done enough, consequently that I may be exempted from the performances of "Zauberflöte," "Freischütz," "Fidelio" and so on. Whatever I can teach and impart in that respect, I will gladly do in private, — one only needs to visit me at Bayreuth. If with those performances of my own works I do not leave my "school" behind me, I can have nothing whatever to do with a "school."
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner to Emil Heckel, with a Brief History of the Bayreuth Festivals, trans. William Ashton Ellis (Grant Richards, 1899), No. 92