Category: Cosima Wagner Diaries

At last able again to work a little with the children. Invited to a coffee party, and having gone there, I am fetched away because Herr Niemann[i] has arrived. His admiration for our house gives R. great pleasure, and the way in which he treats Frl. Brandt is so curious that we…

Tidied up papers, dictated to Lulu a letter to her father. In the afternoon and in the morning R. works with Frl. Brandt[i] and the singer Kneiss[ii]. In the evening the former delighted us with her Waltraute, whose narration moves us all deeply. But the good lady does not seem best…

Had to receive many visitors; in the afternoon shaken to my very core by a letter from my father, enclosing one from Hans; Hans complains of the overexcited state of his nerves, he lost both his memory and his strength, his cure in Salzungen was a failure, dismal symptoms of…

Prof. Overbeck[i], whose visit we heartily welcome, tells us about a publisher, Schmeitzner, who is just opening business in Chemnitz, and whom he likes very much. R. has the idea that he might move here and use Bayreuth as his firm’s address. Heard dismal things about the situation of our…

A succession of visits keeps me from writing in my diary. Friend Klindworth completed the piano arrangement and left on Friday[i] the 14th, on the following day Prof. N. departed, having caused R. many difficult hours.  Among other things, he maintains that the German language gives him no pleasure, and he…

Fine weather, a walk with R. in the palace gardens, after breakfast everybody to work—I with Lusch, R. to his score, friend Klindworth to his arrangement.  After lunch talked a lot about Greek history, the vices and abominations of Sparta, the ignorance of the philosophers who took Sparta as an…