Saturday, April 6:
R. had a good night; he works. “I have found a transition,” he exclaimed yesterday. He goes to his work after we talked at breakfast about the Crown Prince, his lack of interest, and wondered whether his wife might do something.
“I shall never forget how, when he told Marie D[önhoff] that he would have to do something for Bayreuth, she replied with such childish simplicity, ‘Oh, no, Fritz.’”
At lunch Frl. Olden, a young and already celebrated singer! Strange, long-forgotten association.
Around 3 o’clock to the theater with the children, costume fitting, home around 6 o’clock to find R. amusing himself with V. Hugo; he says to me: “After the 1848 revolution I told myself it would never be possible for a publication by Heine to cause a stir again, but then a few years later I myself was reading his Romanzero; during the war with France we said it would never again be possible for events in Paris to interest us as they did then, it was over; and now I am getting so much entertainment from this book, looking forward to every page of it!” “Everything Bismarck does is an imitation of Napoleon III. And everything in Paris has character.”
At 7 o’clock to the amateur concert to hear Frl. Olden, great disappointment, not to say dismay, over the present state of theatrical art. Indescribable tempi, “L’Attente” too hurried, the splendid “Mignonne” garbled, Agathe’s aria without feeling, merely scamped. And this lady already has an engagement worth 24,000 marks! “For such was my school intended; but it’s very doubtful whether I would even have accepted her.”
The program included the Danse macabre by Saint-Saëns, which is at present all the rage in Germany, and R. is amused when I say this work is like a Berlioz panaritium. Home in merry mood: “I’ll never be caught again,” R. exclaims. “Yet it has its advantages—it makes us see even more clearly how happy we are. No, I don’t want anything more to do with the world; the most we will do is hurl our bulls into it through the Bayreuther Blätter. Who would have the nerve to deny that we are living in a time of appalling decadence?”