  Romantic Opera in Three Acts. First performed at the Court Theatre, Weimar, August 28, 1850. Original Cast.
Wiesbaden, 1853; Stettin, Breslau, Frankfort, Schwerin, Leipsic, 1854; Hanover, Darmstadt, Riga, Prague, Hamburg, Cologne, 1855; WÜrzburg, Mayence, Carlsruhe, 1856; Munich, Sondershausen, Vienna, 1857; Dresden, Berlin, Mannheim, 1859; Danzig, KÖnigsberg, 1860; Rotterdam, 1862; Gratz, 1863; Budapesth, 1866; Dessau, 1867; Milan, Cassel, Baden, St. Petersburg, 1868; OlmÜtz, Stuttgart, Gotha, 1869; Brussels, Brunswick, Magdeburg, The Hague, Copenhagen, 1870; Bologna, New York, 1871; Nuremberg, Florence, 1872; LÜbeck, 1873; Stockholm, Strassburg, 1874; Boston, 1875; London, Covent Garden, May 8, 1875; Dublin, 1875; Basle, Trieste, 1876; First performed in America in German at the Stadt Theater, New York, April 3, 1871, under Adolf Neuendorff. Cast.
First performance in Italian, Academy of Music, March 23, 1874. Cast.
LOHENGRINI.—The BookWhen he was collecting the materials for "TannhÄuser," Wagner, as we have seen, read the "Parzival" of Wolfram von Eschenbach. The last one hundred lines of that poem contains one of the versions of the story of Lohengrin. It is an insufficient story, however, and would not in itself have provided the foundation of Wagner's most popular work. As I have said in my introduction to the Schirmer edition of the vocal score of "Lohengrin," "Wagner's method of literary composition was to gather all the versions of a national mythological legend, and select the incidents and characters which fitted into his plan." This plan, of course, grows out of his perception of the dramatic possibilities of the story. The sources of Wagner's poem, then, in addition to "Parzival," were "Der JÜngere Titurel," a poem by Albrecht von Scharffenberg, giving a full account of the Holy Grail and its guardians, and also recounting the life and death of Lohengrin after leaving Brabant; Der Schwanen-Ritter, by Konrad von WÜrzburg, a poem dating from the latter half of the thirteenth century; "Lohengrin," a poem by an unknown Bavarian poet, and the popular form of the legend as given by the Grimm Brothers in the "Deutsche Sagen." At Marienbad in the summer of 1845 he laid down the outlines of his plan, and in the winter ensuing he wrote the book and invented some of the melodic ideas. He began the actual composition of the opera with the narrative of Lohengrin in the final scene, because, like the ballad of Senta, that monologue contained the most significant musical germs in the whole score. While living at Grossgraufen, near Pilnitz, he wrote the music of the third act between September 9, 1846, and March 5, 1847. The first act was composed between May 12 and June 8, 1847, and the second act between June 18th and August 2d of the same year. The prelude was finished on August 28, 1847, and the instrumentation was made during the following winter and spring. The score of the opera was not published for several years, because Meser, who had printed the previous works of the composer, had lost money by the ventures. Breitkopf & HÄrtel subsequently secured the score at a small price, not because they were niggardly in offering, but because Wagner's works had no large market value at the time, and he was anxious to sell, being in his chronic condition of financial embarrassment. The Lohengrin poem gives the story thus: Elsa, daughter of the Duke of Brabant, is left in care of Frederic of Telramund. He aspires to her hand, but she refuses him. He then accuses her before the Emperor of having promised to be his wife and having broken the promise. The Emperor declares that the case must be tried by the ordeal of battle. A passing falcon falls at Elsa's feet with a bell tied to its leg. In her agitation she rings the bell. The sound reaches Monsalvat, where it acts as a summons to Lohengrin, The story of the "Chevalier au Cygne," as found in the Grimm version also, is evidently a combination of two legends. The first deals entirely with the transformation of human beings into swans, and the second with the Swan-Knight. The mother-in-law of a queen, out of hatred, endeavours to make away with her seven children, each of whom was born with a silver chain about its neck, and to throw suspicion on the queen. She gives them to a knight to slay, but he contents himself with leaving them in a wood, where they are found and cared for by a hermit. The king's mother subsequently learns that the children are still alive, and sends a servant to kill them and bring the chains as evidence. He finds six children, one having gone on a short journey with the hermit, and when he takes the chains off their necks they turn into swans and fly away. The king's mother now brings the false accusation against the queen, Subsequently Helyas sees a swan appear, drawing a boat, and knows that he is summoned. At Nimwegen he finds that before the Emperor Otto the Duchess of Bouillon has been accused by her brother-in-law of poisoning her husband. The Emperor has ordered the settlement of the case by the ordeal of combat. Helyas defends the Duchess, overthrows her accuser, marries her daughter, and becomes the father of Godfrey of Bouillon. After seven years the Duchess asks the fatal question, and Helyas, without answering it, goes away forever in his swan-boat. The reader will easily discover in the latter part of this story how the Lohengrin legend has been used to manufacture a supernatural father for Godfrey of Bouillon. It was not at all uncommon for the poets of the mediÆval period thus to celebrate the mighty. We have now before us the chief materials out of which Wagner made his beautiful dramatic poem, for the story of Wolfram's "Parzival" served principally to set him on the track, and to make suggestions as to the character of Elsa. That story tells simply that the Duchess of Brabant refused to be the wife of any man save him whom God should send her, and so Lohengrin came and the marriage took place, with the The Elsa of Wolfram was evidently inclined to become a nun, but in two lines of the "Parzival" Wagner found a suggestion as to her nature of which he made eloquent use in his first act:
The absolute confidence of Wagner's Elsa in the readiness of Providence to send her the knight of whom she had dreamed and her unresisting attitude in the presence of her accuser and her king were certainly drawn from these lines of Wolfram's. From the story of the Swan-Knight he gathered the idea of the transformation of a human being into a swan by a malignant woman, and his tremendously dramatic development of this idea is seen in the plot of his opera. The accusation of Telramund is increased by the assertion that Elsa has murdered her brother, a suggestion drawn, of course, from the accusation against the queen in the "Chevalier au Cygne." He has in reality been transformed into a swan by Ortrud, the wife of Telramund, a character wholly invented by Wagner. It is she who performs the office attributed in the old story to the Duchess of Cleves, that of inspiring distrust and questionings in the mind of Elsa. The character of Telramund is the merest sketch in the sources of the drama and its individuality is entirely the result of Wagner's dramatic skill. The scene is laid at Antwerp, as it is in the Bavarian poet's version, but is retained there instead of being shifted to Mayence. The heroine is the Duchess of Brabant. The monarch, however, is not Otto, but Henry I., who reigned from 918 to 936. In his treatment of this character Wagner adheres to historic truth. Henry was a progressive and an aggressive monarch, and he not only led his people in successful wars against the Huns, but brought order out of political chaos at home. It is to these historical matters that the King refers in the speeches of the opening scene of the opera. In the old stories the Knight has several days in which to reach the woman in distress and fight for her. Wagner has made this episode far more dramatic by requiring the immediate presence of the champion, by the ingenious plan of having the first call unanswered, and by making the fight for Elsa's life and honour take place at once. The arrival of Lohengrin is one of the most theatrically effective scenes in all opera, and the sweet and gentle farewell to the swan, following the hubbub of excitement, affords one of those splendid musical contrasts which are to be found in all Wagner's works and which are, as in this case, entirely his own. The first act of the opera leans heavily on the sources of the story, but the reader can have no difficulty in seeing how ingeniously Wagner has utilised his materials. At the end of the combat it has in recent years been the custom to employ a piece of stage business, authorised by the Bayreuth management, which is destructive of much of the effect of the scene, and obviously contrary to Wagner's original conception. Lohengrin does
"By evil magic's cunning and deceit distort not the nature of the judgment." The meaning of that speech is certainly a prohibition of the exercise of supernatural power by Lohengrin. And in the old stories it is always related that he defeated his opponent in equal combat. The supernatural element is sufficiently to the fore in this first scene in the appearance of the Swan-Knight in answer to the prayer and in reward of the faith of the innocent maiden under accusation. The love of Lohengrin for Elsa is in accordance with the old stories, and so is Elsa's offer of her crown, her domain, and herself. To the fall of the curtain at the end of Act I. Wagner followed the sources of his story closely, the changes being such as I have pointed out, and chiefly of a kind demanded by the technics of dramatic construction. But with the second act we enter a chapter more fully the product of Wagner's genius. The original sources give only suggestions of it. The scene between Telramund and Ortrud at the beginning of this She addresses the maiden on her balcony in the accents of despair. Elsa in pity descends to lead her into the house. Then Wagner makes use of the mediÆval belief that the old pagan gods had not ceased to exist, but were temporarily in retirement from the assaults of Christianity. Ortrud, who is a pagan at heart, calls on the old Norse gods to aid her in overthrowing these Christian enemies of theirs. When Elsa appears, this dark woman at once expresses her fear that a knight who appeared by magic may disappear. Elsa's trust is not yet to be shaken, and Ortrud follows her into the house. When Elsa and her train are moving toward the church, Ortrud claims the right of precedence and, like the Duchess of Cleves in the Throughout this act the immense dramatic skill of Wagner is manifested. With only a few meagre suggestions from the old legends,—basic ideas, indeed, but undeveloped,—he built up an act of extraordinary dramatic power and musical fecundity. In its construction this act equals anything in the entire range of opera. The effective series of pictures, ranging from the dismal pair on the cathedral steps in the gloom, through that of Elsa apostrophising her lover on the moonlit balcony, the entrance into the house of the two women in the glimmer of the torches, the break of day, and the growing glitter of the festal morning with its pageant, up to the splendid climax of the scene in the denouncement of Frederic and the final entry into the church, are as ingeniously arranged as anything in the Meyerbeerian operas; but these scenes succeed one another in a perfectly natural and poetical sequence, and without forcing theatrical craft upon our attention. And in this act Wagner develops with transcendent power the characters of Ortrud and Telramund. Of the malignant pagan sorceress his own words are the best description. In one of the letters to Liszt he says: "Ortrud is a woman who does not know love. By this everything most terrible is expressed. Politics are her essence. A political man is repulsive, but a political woman is horrible. This horror I had to represent. There is a kind of love in this woman, the love of the past, of dead generations, the terribly insane love of ancestral pride which finds its expression in the hatred of everything living and actually existing. In man this love is ludicrous, but in woman it is terrible, because a woman, with her strong natural desire for love, must love something; and ancestral pride, the longing after the past, turns in consequence to murderous fanaticism. In history there are no more cruel phenomena than political women. It is not therefore jealousy of Elsa, perhaps for the sake of Frederic, which inspires Ortrud, but her whole passion is revealed only in the scene of the second act, where, after Elsa's disappearance from the balcony, she rises from the steps of the minster and invokes her old, long-forgotten gods. She is a reactionary person, who thinks only of the old and hates everything new in the most ferocious meaning of the word; she would exterminate the world and nature to give new life to her decayed gods. But this is not merely an obstinate, morbid mood in Ortrud; her passion holds her with the full weight of a misguided, undeveloped, objectless feminine desire for love; for that reason she is terribly grand." This Ortrud of Wagner's touches hands with the Lady Macbeth of Shakespeare. The same ambition, the same political, unsexed womanhood, the same desperate daring, and the same brazen resolve appear in both. Both seek a throne by foul means. Both are labouring for their husbands, and both fear the weakness of the spouse. Ortrud might fairly take from the lips of Lady Macbeth her invocation:
Telramund, "infirm of purpose," like Macbeth, is swayed and mastered by the superior force of his wife's indomitable will and insatiable ambition. Fate follows his footsteps as relentlessly as it does those of the Thane of Cawdor, and when he falls a victim to vaulting ambition, which overleaps itself, he falls a victim of Nemesis. The last act places before us several salient features of the original material. Elsa, not after years of married bliss, but on the bridal night, asks the fatal question. Here Wagner shows a deep appreciation of the poetic possibilities of the theme, undoubtedly suggested to him by the resemblance of the situation to that of Zeus and Semele in classic fable. Elsa never could have grasped the essential nature of this sacred messenger, and so Wagner cuts the knot by ending the marriage at its very outset, before the final surrender of the heroine's womanhood. Lohengrin was never hers; she was never his. Frederic's last attempt follows the utterance of the question, and then before the assembled court, on the river bank where first he appeared, Lohengrin tells the marvellous, thrilling tale of Monsalvat, the Holy Grail and his origin, opening to us for a few moments the cathedral vistas of Wagner's "Te Deum,"—"Parsifal." Ortrud prematurely triumphs and announces that the swan is the missing brother: she herself placed the chain about his neck. Lohengrin calls upon God, and the spell is broken. The rightful heir of Brabant is restored to his sister's arms, and the Swan-Knight floats away in his shallop, this time drawn by a dove, the messenger of heaven. The reader will have no difficulty now in recognising the sources of these incidents, except, per One more note must be made before we pass to a brief examination of the music of Wagner's most popular work. There is a strange resemblance between some of the fundamental features of the story of "Lohengrin" and those of "Der Fliegende HollÄnder." Senta and Elsa are both dream-haunted maidens. Both dream of lovers. About each of the lovers there is something mystic or supernatural. Each of the lovers is to come to the maiden from the water. In each case the maiden is called upon to submit to a certain ordeal, and her failure is to result in the return of the lover to the element from which he came. And in one element of the story the fact is similar, but the relations of the personages changed. In one a maiden is to save the lover; in the other, the lover comes as a champion and saviour. Is it not possible that the origin of the two legends is the same, the story of Skeaf, the mysterious king of the Angles, who drifted to their shores in a rudderless shallop when a babe, and grew to be a good and great monarch? When he died, they laid his body in the shallop and the little vessel floated away into the unknown, whence it came. II.—The MusicAnd now let us look at the music of this opera, music which is usually listened to with complacent admiration for its mellifluous melody, but too seldom "TannhÄuser" is a hybrid. Old forms jostle the new; thin melodic strophes in conventional song-patterns lower the potency of some scenes to the level of Italian opera. But in "Lohengrin" the song form disappears forever from the Wagnerian scheme. The music is the utterance of speech; the melody, the spontaneous embodiment of feeling. There is no longer any recitative. There is only musical dialogue. And the leitmotiv, temporarily laid aside in the composition of "TannhÄuser," returns with wider and deeper and more varied meaning. We are at the culmination of the transition period of Wagner's genius, standing at the outer gates of "Tristan" and "Die Meistersinger." Wagner himself recognised the nature and the limits of the advance made in this opera. He declares in the "Communication" that he was here seeking to free himself from the tyranny of the final cadence—that which tells the ear of the completion of a melodic form—and to make the music the outgrowth of the speech. The prelude to "Lohengrin" may be described as an instrumental representation of the vision of the Holy Grail. The motive on which it is built is that which throughout the opera typifies the sacredness of Lohengrin and his identity as a messenger of the Grail. music THE GRAIL. This theme is heard at the beginning of the prelude in its first form. It is heard again when Lohengrin prepares to bid farewell to the swan which is to return to Monsalvat, the palace of the Grail, thus announcing the identity of the knight as a messenger of the Grail. It is not heard again till the third act, except for a passing moment in Act II., where the music LOHENGRIN THE KNIGHT. This motive immediately follows the first appearance of the Grail motive in the first act and becomes the instrumental background to Elsa's "In lichter Waffen Scheine ein Ritter nahte da" ("I saw in splendour shining a knight of glorious mien"). It is heard again when Lohengrin appears in the distance coming down the Scheldt in answer to Elsa's prayer, and at the end of the first act, when the triumph is complete, it peals forth fortissimo. It announces Lohengrin's entrance in Act II. and again in the final scene of the opera. At the end of all Wagner shows us that the knightly character of Lohengrin music THE SWAN. This is heard as the accompaniment to the closing words of Lohengrin's farewell to the swan in Act I.; again in Act III., when the half-hysterical Elsa fancies she sees the swan coming to take Lohengrin away, and finally when the Knight is about to address the swan preparatory to his departure in the last scene. A part of the melody which accompanies the entrance of Elsa in the first act is also evidently designed to act as a leading motive. This may be called the motive of Elsa's faith. music ELSA’S FAITH. It is repeated immediately after the entrance of the maid, when the King asks her if she will be judged by him, and the stage direction bids her make a gesture expressive of her music ELSA’S FAITH BROKEN. Two themes are employed to signify the evil elements of the drama. The first of these is the prohibition motive: music THE PROHIBITION. Nie sollst du mich befragen. The ban of secrecy imposed by Lohengrin becomes a potent weapon for evil in the hands of Ortrud. It is heard ominously in the introductory measures of the second act, and with portentous meaning when Ortrud begins to unfold her plan to Frederic. When Ortrud in the scene with Elsa says, "May he never leave thee who was by magic hither brought," the music ORTRUD. This is first heard in the introduction to Act II. It reappears when Ortrud begins to reveal her ideas to Frederic, and accompanies each of her suggestions for the overthrow of Lohengrin and destruction of Elsa. It is heard again in the accompaniment to the short ensemble which succeeds Lohengrin's appeal to Elsa in the finale of Act II., when to his dismay he sees that she is wavering. Again it sounds when Frederic whispers to Elsa in the same scene, and when the maid declares her doubts in the chamber scene it is repeated to show that she is acting under the influence of Ortrud. This is a very close approach to the fully developed employment of the leitmotiv, for in the later dramas we find these themes frequently used to connect the passing action with the influences which have led to it or to associate it with an absent personality. A less important motive, but one whose treatment foreshadows Wagner's later musical method, is that of the ordeal: music THE ORDEAL. This makes its appearance in Act I. after the nobles shout "Zum Gottesgericht!" ("a judgment of God!"), and immediately before the King addresses Telramund asking him if he will do battle. In the major mode it is sounded by the trumpets on the stage as the summons to Elsa's champion to appear, and its fundamental rhythm becomes that of the music to which the six nobles pace off the measurement of the ground. In the fight itself this motive is worked out orchestrally as an accompaniment to the action. It belongs strictly to the music of the scene, yet it is treated thematically and developed as far as needed. These are all the leading motives of "Lohengrin." The rest of the music is freely composed, but the attentive hearer will note that while ethereal string harmonies intone the Grail motive, Lohengrin's knighthood is announced by the brass, and to the wood wind choir is allotted Elsa's music. For the rest the lover of this opera must seek his intellectual enjoyment in the general fidelity of the score to the thought of the text, to the increasing freedom from the shackles of formularies, and to the flexible, changeful, constantly significant harmonic plan. The enormous variety of the rhythmic effects is obtained without frequent changes of time. The first Yet the one thing which Wagner felt most keenly in the composition of this opera was his subserviency to rhythm—not musical, but poetical. He admits that he had not yet freed himself from old melodic ideas and that the dominance of the cadence was still felt in his work, but his real difficulty was the inflexibility of verse written in modern metre, which makes such rigorous demands for imitation in the form of the musical setting. He was in later works to find the solution of that problem and enter the kingdom of perfect freedom from textual rule. The music of "Lohengrin," then, must be regarded as standing midway between the style of "Der Fliegende HollÄnder" and that of "Die Meistersinger." Its extraordinary popularity is due to the external and sensuous charms of its melody, which make their appeal to the aural palate of those incapable of comprehending a dramatic scheme such as Wagner's. |
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