Sunday, April 30:
At 12 o’clock our old friend Weitzmann comes to conduct us to the Singakademie, where R. is to be received. It all takes place in the friendliest way; the orchestra, consisting of various poor musicians, plays the Faust Overture and the Tannhäuser March, not at all badly, so nicely, in fact, that R. feels disposed to say a few words and then to take up the baton and conduct the Overture again, amid great applause.
Dohm’s prologue, spoken by niece Johanna, was very pretty. R. was genuinely moved, and the whole thing was much better than expected.
But afterward R. is very tired; we go home, he lies down. Then a conversation with Prince Georg proves a tremendous strain on him, for the Prince, in spite of much good will, does not really know what it is all about, and is hardly capable of understanding. In the evening to Wallner’s theater with our nice and modest friends the Neumanns.