Monday, February 3:
10 o’clock rehearsal-the orchestra players coming from all over the place. “Only the police know their addresses,” says Prof. Stern; but they are very attentive and full of fire. At the beginning R. had some trouble over members of the public streaming in and men smoking cigars, then very great trouble over the shortage of voices and a tuning harp (the harp player had taken part in a concert the evening before, the promoter had not been able to pay the rent for the hall, whereupon the instruments had been confiscated!), but in the end he was not dissatisfied.
Listening to the Tannhäuser Overture, I had to think of its first performance in Berlin, in the year ’56, under Hans’s direction; it was severely hissed, Hans fainted; I returned to his mother’s house and stayed up late until he arrived, so that he should realize that there was one human soul who would thank him for his efforts. This gratitude was the seed from which our union sprang.
R. lies down in bed. At 6 o’clock we have dinner at Johanna Jachmann’s home, with Count Usedom, Countess Briihl, the family of Jachmann’s Jewish partner, etc. I sat beside the partner and talked to him about Bayreuth, battling against the most absurd of objections until he reduced me to silence by asking whether Wagner had anything to do with the texts. Returning home, I pay my respects to Frau von Meyendorff, who has come from Weimar to attend the concert, and I am touched by her question as to whether I can forgive her “for having been so malicious,” and altogether by her feelings for my father.