"DER ROSENKAVALIER" In the beginning there was "Guntram," of which we in America heard only fragmentary echoes in our concert-rooms.

Then came "Feuersnot," which reached us in the same way, but between which and the subject which is to occupy me in this chapter there is a kinship through a single instrumental number, the meaning of which no commentator has dared more than hint at.

It is the music which accompanies the episode, politely termed a "love scene," which occurs at the climax of the earlier opera, but is supposed to take place before the opening of the curtain in the later.

Perhaps I shall recur to them again--if I have the courage.
These were the operas of Richard Strauss which no manager deemed it necessary or advisable to produce in New York.

Now came "Salome." Popular neurasthenia was growing.