Saturday, March 29:
“South wind, south wind!” I hope it is spring at last! ... At breakfast R. and I discuss the positioning of Titurel’s catafalque and decide that it should be placed high up in the arch from which Titurel’s voice is heard in the first act, thus leaving the middle of the stage free for Amfortas’s outburst, Parsifal’s act of healing, and the blessing.
Yesterday R. played to me a theme he brought back from the palace gardens (“which now contain much of me”) - for a symphony. Today he asked me jokingly how long I thought he would continue to be productive: “I still want to write symphonies,” he says. In the evening we read with much enjoyment about Cagliostro, or, rather, the story of the necklace; but for Carlyle’s philosophy, the “Maker” which frequently peeps through, we do not much care.