Saturday, April 27:
R. was already awake at 5 o’clock; at lunchtime he shows me the scene, almost completed in ink, and he plays the theme, the enchanting theme, to the children. I with the children to the schoolhouse for rehearsals. R. not entirely well, but still working and enjoying his work; only he says he dare not think of the performance: “When I hear, for instance, that Vogl is already saying he will sing Parsifal, my blood boils.” Firm resolve not to read friend Nietzsche’s book, which seems at first glance to be strangely perverse. In the evening Ivanhoe, then amused ourselves with some things from Marschner’s Templer. Yesterday R. praised La Dame Blanche, calling it a unique work, incomparable in its way.