Sunday, July 6:
R. had a good night. Our lighthearted breakfast conversation includes the emancipation of women, a question which is so well treated by C. Frantz. R. says the ladies are always thinking of Portia in The Merchant of Venice, but she got a lawyer to tell her what to do. “What a scene that is!” R. exclaims. Then we recall the courtship scene, and how badly it is acted as a rule - was it ever performed better? “Perhaps,” says R., “perhaps there was a flourishing period once.”
Speaking of the beauty of this scene, he says, “The poet saw what possibilities lay in drawing three separate characters, just as in Siegfried’s Tod I visualized the Valkyrie and young Siegfried and did not want to let them escape me.” At lunch our good mayor; his visit concerns the announcement that it will not be possible to perform Parsifal next year, which R. has phrased very succinctly; the management committee is unwilling to sign it, for fear of acting contrary to the agreement and getting into difficulties on that account.
R. is very much put out, and he says angrily that the declaration must be made, even if he has to go off to America to give concerts. He cannot eat a thing, and leaves the table! The old trouble, always the same kind of cooperation - sufficient to cause obligations, insufficient to be helpful! R. is also unable to take his afternoon rest, he tries a walk, whist in the evening, all under a cloud. Siegfried unwell.