Monday, May 14:
Rehearsal till 1 o'clock, after which I go to Mr. and Mrs. Lewes' for lunch and then with them to the studio of the Pre-Raphaelite painter Burne-Jones. Pretty, delicate pictures; he himself very pleasant.
At 8 in the evening the concert, with a substantial number of the royal family and a fairly full house. Herr Unger already shows signs of hoarseness in the Lohengrin duet, and he declares he will be unable to sing the “Forging Songs”; it is decided to repeat Wotan's Farewell, but Herr Hill has already gone home, persistent confusion. Finally Mr. Hodge tells the audience that the Ride of the Valkyries will be played instead of the forging scene, but the concert ends, after all, with the farewell scene between Siegfried and Brünnhilde, though indeed only Frau Materna can be heard. This is the last straw, that now the program cannot even be adhered to!