Saturday, August 6:
Breakfast in the turret. Yesterday R. worked out a plan to complete his score by January and then to take us via Venice and Corfu to Athens, and from there to Palermo! He works diligently today to do his two pages. We say farewell to Brandt, who eats with us and drinks to Richard’s health.
In the evening a sudden thunderstorm chases us from the garden; discussions of all kinds with our friends Rub., Jouk., Stein about Schopenhauer, about the old form of opera, which still produced real singers. “Now all we have is music drama,” says R., and he brings out the term “music drama” in such an indescribably comical Saxon accent that we all burst out laughing. “If she is called Caroline,” he quotes from W. Scott’s The Heart of Midlothian, “if it is called music drama ...” Opera led us to Guillaume Tell, this to the opera’s so comical notion of the Swiss; and R. speaks very much in their favor in connection with their resort to arms in ’52. Over coffee, on the other hand, he spoke of Bismarck’s wrongheadedness and all the legislation he has now had to repeal.
At lunch, about Kundry and how she should look in the desert, he thinks I may be right when I suggest that she should not fade like the flowers, but during the dramatic action should appear to be tearing her clothes, casting off her jewelry. The fact that our friend Humperdinck has won the Meyerbeer Prize (4,500 marks) gives rise to many jokes. Regarding Rubinstein, whom R. apostrophizes on account of some peculiar behavior, R. says afterward, “If he knew how difficult we find him, he would make things easier for us.”