Category: December 1874

Slept deeply and long; in the morning we complain at hearing no music! . . . R. works with great reluctance on his letter to Fritzsch about the Jessonda performance. I write some letters, the children play. In the evening R. reads to me from the preface of Gfrörer’s book…

In the morning I hear the Idyll, and after it the “Rose- und Kosenlied”[1]—R. and I in tears! Afterward I learn how R. arranged this whole secret. The orchestra from Hof was engaged, and he conducted the rehearsal yesterday in the Hotel Sonne.  He tells me how well the children…

Working uninterruptedly on setting things up, which lasts from morning until 5 o’clock in the evening. The whole household along with the Nibelung Chancellery, 25 people in all, come through the salon into the hall, and all seem pleased and in good spirits. On my table lies the Götterdämmerung sketch!…

Set out early in the morning to hurry up the unpunctual people. — From noon on occupied with the tree, I tell R. that the motto for this Christmas is: “Nonsense, thou hast won!”[1] R. works on a letter about the performance of Jessonda [2]. Our four musicians come in…

R. tells me how he has arranged the individual pieces from Götterdämmerung-, he says: “I did it just so that you could listen to them.” But where to find a Sieglinde? — We talk about Der Ring des Nibelungen, and R. remarks how curious it was that he designed it…

R. does not reach home until half past three; he did not find a Sieglinde and altogether had the feeling of having seen nothing but ghosts; he says, “One walks around one’s own country as if in a foreign land; the old people are all shriveled up, the young ones…