December 8 Wednesday – Sam and perhaps others of the family attended the opera Die Walkure, with Gustav Mahler in his first season as the Hofoperndirektor, after which he noted, “W.[agner’s] music is better than it sounds.”

Dolmetsch writes,

During his twenty months in Vienna, Samuel Clemens probably experienced more highbrow music willy-nilly than he had in the previous six decades of his life combined. Then, as now, the Court Opera … was one of the two leading musical institutions of the city, the other being the Vienna Philharmonic, which furnished the pit orchestra for the Opera. Leschy had a box at the k.k. Hofoper in which Clemens and his family were frequent guests for performances, and they were also often invited by other boxholders among their acquaintances, though Clara said her father rarely stayed through to the final curtain [97].