There I found two tickets for parquet seats in the first row for Salome and I took Berliner along. The performance was excellent in very respect – orchestrally, vocally, and scenically it was pure Kitsch and Stoll [Mahler’s stage managers at the Vienna Opera], and again it made an extraordinary impression on me. It is an extremely clever, very powerful piece, which certainly belongs among the most significant of our time! Beneath a heap of rubbish an infernal fire lives and burns in it - not just fireworks. / That’s the way it is with Strauss’s whole personality and it’s difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff. But I had felt tremendous respect for the whole manifestation and this was confirmed again. Destinn was magnificent; the Jochanaan (Berger) very fine. The others, so-so. The orchestra, really superb.