Monday, May 30:
Buying clothes; R. tells me he has ordered fine bright trousers, having told himself, “In your wedding year you are entitled to look elegant.” I am worried about Loulou, who is complaining of a headache. In the newspaper it is reported that the first rehearsal of Die Walküre took place on May 16 and that Herr Marpurg from Darmstadt is to conduct the performances. R. very upset, writes to Herr Marpurg to tell him it is not a question of his (R.’s) being short of conductors—just that all of them with any sense of decency are refusing to conduct the work in the composer’s absence. Reflections about the King; gnawing grief.
There is talk in the paper of great disturbances in Florence, which worries me on Hans’s account; how even the most favored of people are affected by the burdens of life!
Richter writes from Vienna, giving news of Herr Horawitz; in character the ambiguous counterpart of Herr Julius Lang; a true Falstaff’s army!
In the evening Die Jungfrau von Orleans. (Letter from Klindworth in Moscow, who is arranging Siegfried for the piano and says how grateful we must all be to the King for providing R. with the leisure to write such works. “It was something else which made this leisure productive,” says R.)