Sunday, January 12:
Got the children washed early, at breakfast received a telegram from Pusinelli saying that Rienzi is being performed on Monday, decision to leave at midday, great turmoil! We are ready in time, at 1:30 p.m. at the railroad station, where unfortunately R. sees a poor fish wriggling out of a woman’s basket; he goes up to her, tells her for God’s sake to have the fish killed; stupidly and heartlessly she replies it will not take long to get to the next stop; R. greatly upset: “One shouldn’t bother with art,” he exclaimed, “but wander through the streets, observing things quietly, admonishing, and helping. Fine churches, fine sermons - one sees what help they are!”
Gloomy start to our journey, but gradually our thoughts grow more cheerful amid the pretty scenery; lovely sunshine. I talk to R. of the effect on me of “The Diver” and “The Battle” and “Ode to Joy.” “In the last,” he says, “one sees the influence of Klopstock - the ode. It was a good period - everybody awakened by Frederick the Great, but as regards his own consciousness of this action, one can see from history what that was. He was the complete ‘Fanget an’ [‘Now begin’] - only he did not know it!” Lovely impression of the lighted smelting works in the Erzgebirge, which gleam like glowworms in the depths, busy people toiling and moiling inside them! Towns increasing vastly in size: I ask myself sadly what we are after in this industrial Iron Age. One last shriek and upsurge of art in its extremity!
In Chemnitz at 8 o’clock, much pleasure in seeing R.’s sister Klara again, at 10 o’clock in Dresden. Put up in the Hotel Bellevue. In the train, thinking of Fidi, R. spoke of his own impressions of Der Freischütz in his 5th year, how he tried to imitate Samiel lurking in the bushes and to sing the theme - these early impressions had surely done him no harm, on the contrary. He continues: “If only Weber had set all the dialogue to music - from the drinking song to the end of the act - what a splendid scene it would have made! That is my real innovation: that I have incorporated dialogue into opera, and not just as recitative.”