The performances of earlier Strauss works were in the main well attended. Oddly enough the poorest house—and it was far from empty—was that of The Rosecavalier. Possibly because the composer had gone over to Tübingen to conduct a concert there (he always makes hay while the Strauss shines), there was so little enthusiasm displayed; possibly also because Max Schillings conducted. He is an excellent [Pg 164] composer, a practical conductor, but he couldn\'t extract the "ginger" in the score—and it\'s full of it, full of fire, of champagne, of dreamy sentiment and valses that would turn gray with envy the hair of Johann Strauss if he hadn\'t thought of them before his namesake Richard. I didn\'t grow enthusiastic over the Stuttgart production, mainly a local affair. The honours of the evening rightfully belonged to Alwin Swoboda, who looked like De Wolf Hopper, but sang a trifle better. A favourite there is Iracema-Brügelmann; another, Erna Ellmenreich. One can sing, but acts amateurishly; the other screams, but is a clever actress. In Salome she was wonderful, singing out of tune as she often did. Her pose was hieratic as a sphinx when she watched the antics of the neurasthenic Herod. And her dance was one of the best I have yet seen, though Aino Acté\'s is said to rank them all. Wittich, Krull, Destinn, Rose, Walther, Acté, not one of them ever sang as sang Olive Fremstad at that memorable dress rehearsal of a certain Sunday morning in the Metropolitan Opera-House. Vocally she was the Salome of Richard Strauss, and she was lovely to behold. Salome herself should be a slight, cynical young person—half Flaubert, half Laforgue. Under Strauss the Salome is neither impossible nor vulgar. Very intense, an apparition rather than a human, she sounds the violet rays of eroticism (if I may be forgiven such a confusion of terms, of such a mixed [Pg 165] metaphor). Another thing: the tempi were different from Campanini\'s—i. e., the plastic quality of the reading gave us new colours, new scents, new curves. Strauss is careless when he directs the works of others, but with his own he is all devotion. Take Elektra, for instance.

But I must finish my Salome budget. The Herod was not the actor that was Karl Burrian, but he sang better. His name is Josef Tyssen. The John was Herman Weil. Salome was preceded by Feuersnot, the folks-tone of which is an admirable foil to the overladen tints of Salome. (By the way, the sky in the latter opera showed the dipper constellation, Charles\'s Wain. Now, will some astronomer tell us if such a thing is possible in Syrian skies?) Herman Weil was the chief point of attraction. As for the so-called immoral ending of the composition, discovered by amateur critical prudes, to be forthright in my speech, it is all nonsense: it doesn\'t exist. But Wolzogen doesn\'t follow the lines of the Famine of Fire. His is a love scene with a joke for relief. The music is ultra-Wagnerian, the finale genuine Strauss, with its swelling melos, its almost superhuman forcing of the emotional line to the ecstatic point.

In Elektra, with the composer conducting, I again marvelled at the noisy, ineffective "reading" of a Hammerstein conductor, whose name I\'ve forgot............