[...] My best thanks to you and to the excellent Vogls. Briefly, my reply to your kind proposal is simply that I think the time is past for giving concerts or anything else of the kind in support of the Bayreuth enterprise. It is assured now, although at the moment there are still a few difficulties to be overcome. My chief support is in the good will of my singers and musicians. We shall not break up next year till after the three performances; everything will be in order then. Say no more to me about my disinclination to the performance of fragments at concerts! Moreover, it would be too great a strain to me even to conduct a stage performance of Tristan myself, and I have, therefore, left this to trusted conductors for some years past.
I am, indeed, very sorry not to be able for the moment to pursue further my acquaintance so happily begun with the excellent Vogls. If only I had them both in Vienna! How I should like to rehearse Tannhäuser with him, for example! I was opposed to a mere hasty "starring" in a few performances of Tristan in Vienna, but if the two singers could settle there for a longer period, I would very gladly rehearse Tristan with them afresh. I wrote as much recently to the director Jauner, adding that I had no heart for the coming production of Tannhäuser with the present Viennese personnel. [...]
I am very glad that you remember me, only it still seems to me that you are not clear about my relations with Munich. Among the public there it is not the "old men" with whom I wish to have no dealings; on the contrary, I prize very highly the whole Munich public from childhood to old age, and I have never had any complaints to make against it. Just as certainly it is not the artistes—neither singers nor musicians—but certain ghosts there whom I prefer not to encounter again! [...]
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Vol. 2, selected and ed. Wilhelm Altmann, trans. M. M. Bozman (J. M. Dent & Sons, 1927), No. 679