Saturday, June 11:
Letter from the conductor Esser in Salzburg, reporting that Die Walküre is to be produced in Munich on June 26. R. laughs and says, “My contacts with Esser, now that he is retired from the theater, remind me of how it used to be with Pohlenz long ago, when he and I deplored the ‘new era’ led by Mendelssohn and together represented the worthy old artistic tastes of Leipzig.”
I suddenly feel very unwell and go for a drive with the children to recover a little. Returning home I find Prof. Nietzsche and his friend Herr Rohde, also a philologist, who had announced their coming yesterday. Lively and serious conversation. In the evening Prof. N. reads us a lecture on the Greek music drama, a title for which R. pulls him up, explaining the reason for his disapproval. The lecture is a good one and shows that he has a true feeling for Greek art. (Prof. N. has brought me Dürer’s Melancholie.)