My dear swan

"You must never question me!"
How could a thinking, emancipated person not consider this demand an outrage? The question-prohibition laid down by Lohengrin, the unapproachable, corresponds directly to the prohibition of knowledge pronounced by the Unfathomable. God proves his love to man by putting him in his place. In order to be grateful to him, one needs to possess a well-nigh super-human love of God.
Wagner is acting as a provocateur. Elsa, an innocent young woman (thus emphasized by the music from the outset), is arbitrarily accused of the greatest crime. She cannot defend herself and summons her ideal man to fight for her. (Once again, our modern indignation rears its head.) The baffled and helpless king decides to call on divine justice: thus, destiny should decide the fate of the innocent maiden. He might just as well have tossed a coin. However, Lohengrin turns up at exactly the right moment. But if the knight had not appeared, what then? The poor woman would truly have been sold down the river. But at least she would have remained pure of heart. Yet as it happens, she is permitted to prostrate herself before Lohengrin. And he is allowed to impose conditions: "Never shall you ask me, nor trouble yourself to know, whence I journeyed, what my name is, or what my origin!" This is pure blackmail! It also includes a presumptuous ban on the freedom of thought. In the end, Elsa's lord and master departs, and she "sinks to the ground …lifeless." (Wagner). Admittedly, life could have been easier on her...
Of course, in the Bible it was the woman, Eve, who took a bite of the apple of the tree of knowledge; according to Greek mythology, it was Psyche who wanted at all costs to see her ruthless seducer Amor in the light; and in the fairytales, it was the girl who had to walk around with a sheep's head because she took the lid off the pot, despite having
been forbidden to do so. We have long grown accustomed to this. Unfortunately, two thousand years of Christianity also equals two thousand years of patriarchy; and in the meantime, the ineradicable myth of the stupid, inquisitive and forward woman has grown persistently – and continues to do so.

If only my delusions could find peace
Throughout his life, Richard Wagner suffered from the stress caused by a huge, all-consuming, and at times devastating driving force: the delusion "of the narcissistic wound of the man that needs to be healed through the unconditional love of a woman" (Dietmar Holland). Wagner personally wore out an impressive phalanx of women. On top of that, he also "contaminated" all his works and the characters therein with his obsessive desire for redemption. The Dutchman burdened Senta with his salvation, Tannhäuser has Venus to "tend" for him, as Elizabeth is considered (and considers herself) to be above that, Tristan yearns for Isolde to place her fingers on his wound (just as Richard Wagner himself wished to "slake his thirst" with Mathilde Wesendonck). Humiliated by Mathilde's rejection, he salvaged his ego again by making the elderly Sachs renounce Eve Pogner in an act of true repentance – that is, Sachs' (Wagner's?) wounded heart continues to fester in secret. Later, Wagner takes revenge on Amfortas for the apparently chastened Sachs. He makes him weak when faced by Kundry – and lets him waste away. And Parsifal, the pure fool? Does he truly abstain from temptation? Or is he (as yet) not "capable"? For later, he does father a son: Lohengrin. In turn, the latter confronts Elsa with his conditions. Finally Siegmund succumbs to his sister Sieglinde; Siegfried is shattered by his weakness for Brünnhilde; and even Wotan squanders his virility on Erda. Not to forget the "power chicks" Ortrud, Gutrune or Kundry, who from the outset intend to destroy the man involved (yet who are rewarded by Wagner with the most exciting and fascinating music).
Richard Wagner's narcissistic desire for redemption is the true opiate, the enormous and omnipresent addictive potential contained in his music dramas – as Friedrich Nietzsche has already pointed out to us. It transcends any temporal, spatial, sexual, social and scenic limitations, because it rightly presupposes a willing, even a greedy susceptibility on the part of the recipient, be he the opera-goer in particular or mankind in general. It was Wagner who styled himself as the archetypical male. He demands unconditional surrender. One is happy to grant him that, in the face of his phenomenal music, even if his demand is bluntly demagogic, as he believes the "mysterious flowing juices" of his music are capable of seeping "right into the marrow of our lives" (Wagner), with the sole intention of "overwhelming our critical faculties by the power of immediate sensation" (Dietmar Holland). Suddenly the 'religious' side of Wagner's art becomes totally clear.

Act I
A meadow on the banks of the river Scheldt near Antwerp
The German king Heinrich I, known as King Henry "the Fowler", wants to recruit warriors from among the men of Brabant for a crusade against the Hungarians. But first he has to resolve a dispute. No less a person than Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) is called upon to describe the plot of Wagner's Lohengrin: "A young princess who is accused of the most hideous crime of fratricide, has no means of demonstrating her innocence. Thus judgment is entrusted to a 'divine' trial. No knight steps forward to defend her, but she puts her trust in a strange vision: an unknown knight who appeared in her dream. He will take over her defence. At the very last moment, when it seems that her guilt has been proven unquestionably, a boat approaches on the river drawn by a swan on a gold chain. Lohengrin, Knight of the Holy Grail, patron of the innocent and the weak, has heard the call in his far-away holy sanctuary, where the divine chalice is kept in utmost safety, rendered twice holy through the Last Supper and the blood of our Saviour, caught by Joseph of Arimathea from the seeping wound in his side. Lohengrin, son of Parsifal, steps out of the boat. Leaning on his sword, he is clad in silver armour with his helmet on his head, his shield on his shoulder, and a small golden horn at his side. "If I am victorious fighting for you," Lohengrin says to Elsa, "would you wish me to be your husband? – Elsa, if you wish me to be your husband, you have to promise me one thing: that you will never question me... (etc.)".
The knight Lohengrin proclaims Elsa's innocence. As a sign of the validity of his opinion, the challenger, Friedrich Telramund, sinks to his knees almost as soon as Lohengrin's sword touches him. Apparently, Telramund is defeated, and Elsa saved.

Act II
Ortrud and her weak-willed tool Count Telramund, who has been pardoned by Lohengrin, discuss how to turn the situation to their advantage. In other words, against his better judgment, the doubly deceived Friedrich is hanging on every word uttered by his scheming wife. She accuses Lohengrin of evil magic and prophesies that Lohengrin will be brought to a fall if his identity (as a knight of the Grail, and therefore as a chaste weakling?) is revealed, or if his manhood is directly cut off. ("Every creature that is made strong by magic, should but the smallest part of its body be torn off, it will immediately show itself to be powerless as it really is.") Friedrich Telramund does not wait to be told twice. However, Ortrud deceives the naive Elsa, presenting herself as a weak outcast. After having thus sneakily gained the confidence of the maiden, she manages to create a chink in Elsa's faith in Lohengrin. Perhaps he will disappear as quickly as he arrived? How can one be sure? Meanwhile, the king urges them to arrange a speedy wedding: after all, the new ruler of Brabant is due to lead the army against the Hungarians the following day. Basically the events of the first act are repeated. The former contender for the throne, Telramund, once again spits out tremendous accusations: this time not directed at Elsa, but at Lohengrin, her protector. And Ortrud, filled with hate and obsessed with power, agrees with him. With difficulty, the king puts his foot down, speaking out in favour of Lohengrin. But Elsa's peace of mind has deserted her.

Act III
Instead of simply enjoying their wedding night, Elsa urges her husband to reveal his origins. She is motivated here by genuine interest in him, by human love; however, his interpretation of true love consists of her unquestioning acceptance of him. Thus, they do not even have an opportunity to conceive a descendent for Lohengrin, in contrast to the events recounted in the original mediaeval tale, in which Elsa does not put the fatal question to her husband until after the wedding night.
To quote Baudelaire once again: "Doubt has crushed her faith in him, and this vanished faith draws happiness to its bosom. Lohengrin slays Friedrich, who had tried to kill him in an ambush, and reveals his true origins to the king, the knights and the people: once again, the swan appears swimming up the river in order to return the knight to his mysterious home. In her blind hatred, the witch admits that the swan is, in fact, Elsa's brother, whom she herself had bewitched. Lohengrin turns towards the Holy Grail in fervent prayer, then climbs into the boat. A dove appears in place of the swan, and the Duke of Brabant once again stands before us. The knight returns home to Monsalvat. And Elsa – who had voiced her doubts, who had wanted to find out, to investigate – has now lost her happiness. The idyll has gone up in smoke."

I love you – but what does that mean?
It is often mentioned that Lohengrin is the only opera of Wagner's in which the words "I love you" are actually pronounced. Lohengrin says this to Elsa – and equally unique is the entire word-by-word repetition of this phrase – immediately after indicating to her unequivocally that she is never to question his name and origins. Yet in return for the demands he makes of her as proof of her love for him, he has nothing to offer her but simple words: "I tell you that I love you, and that should be enough." Elsa's desire for perceptible love seems at this moment just as inevitably pre-programmed as Lohengrin's ubiquitous flight reflex from this one true love relationship.
Wagner hesitated a long time before writing a definite end to the opera. Many friends and critics considered the ending to the great love story too harsh. Could not Elsa have followed Lohengrin as Senta followed the Dutchman? In that case, Lohengrin would have to die – or Elsa live. For that is how fairy tales end. But Lohengrin is both fairy tale and tragedy, a combination of history and myth. The dramaturgically stylistic "fracturing" of the opera prescribes such doubly hybrid origins: this complicates its classification as well as the qualification of the substantial features of the opera. Does Lohengrin really ever have a chance to become a man of flesh and blood? Does the grail need a reality other than that provided by the music? Should the swan just appear figuratively? Is the romance just a foil? No, the theatrical instinct of Wagner the dramatist did not allow him to accept an "and-if-they-are-not-dead-then-they-are-still-alive-to-this-day" ending. Lohengrin turns away from the people, returns to the lonely remoteness of the Grail. Friedrich Telramund is dead, his wife Ortrud "sinks to the ground with a cry at the sight of Gottfried". Whether she will later recover, is left unanswered. However, Elsa "sinks to the ground, lifeless, in Gottfried's arms". In other words, she is as dead as Telramund; whereas the two true adversaries, Ortrud and Lohengrin, must in some way live on.

Worship or love?
In 1851, in his Communication to my friends, Wagner wrote the following: "Lohengrin was seeking a woman who believed in him: who did not question who he was and whence he came, but loved him for himself and for being just as he appeared to her. He was seeking the woman to whom he did not have to explain or justify himself, but who would love him absolutely. Therefore, he had to hide his higher nature, for it was precisely in the non-detection, in the non-disclosure of this higher – or, to put it more accurately, elevated – essence that lay the only guarantee that the admiration and adoration he would receive was not only for the sake of this higher being, or that he, misunderstood as he was, was being paid homage in a humble and worshipful manner: he longed for the only thing that could rescue him from his loneliness, that could still his yearning – love: to love, to be loved, to be understood through love. In the most heightened state of his senses, in his most conscious consciousness, he wanted nothing more than to become and remain a full, complete, sympathetic and warmly appreciated human being: in other words, a human being, not a god, an absolute artist. Thus he longed for the woman – the human heart. And so he descended to the earth from his sweetly desolate solitude after hearing the call for help uttered by this woman, by this heart in the midst of humanity down below. But the irremovable and telltale halo of the higher being clings to him: he can not appear as anything but miraculous; the wonder of the mean-spirited, the drooling of the envious throw their shadows into the heart of the loving woman; this doubt and jealousy prove to him that he is not understood, only worshiped, extracting from him the confession of his divinity, after which he returns to his loneliness, a destroyed man."
Yes indeed, that is how Wagner would most like to be perceived. He explains his music with abundant imagery, not only by means of the text and detailed stage directions contained in the libretto, but also in his expansive letters and extensive theoretical treatises. Furthermore, the music itself provides an impressive answer to all questions. Upon closer inspection, one often realizes how Wagner points a flashlight at distracting words located in a remote corner, while the actual event taking place is lit up by itself – in sounds coming from the score.
To quote Carl Dahlhaus: "As he wrote in his Communication to my friends, Wagner was surprised and disappointed that Lohengrin – in whose tragedy he recognized his own – was perceived as a 'cold and hurtful person', by many a critic – and not even by his harshest critics. However, perhaps the error – for that is obviously what it is – is not an inexcusable one. As Lohengrin, although he feels or at least yearns to be human, can never deny his origins, it is only natural to 'misinterpret' his love for Elsa as a kind of mercy bestowed upon her."
Yet if it really is a mistake to perceive Lohengrin as cold and hurtful – which is by no means certain – then, according to Dahlhaus, Wagner "obscured, rather than clarified the tragedy of his characters" by means of the previous comment. "The root of this tragedy consists, put in a crude and stereotypical manner, in nothing more than that Lohengrin is thwarted in achieving the objective for which he yearns by the means by which he seeks to achieve it. Perhaps it would be possible for a worshiper, remaining shyly in the distance, to follow his prohibition on questioning him – imposed by Lohengrin in order to receive love rather than adulation – but that just does not work when love is involved, on a human scale ...".

Thrown out with the bath water
It all started in the summer of 1845 in Marienbad. Wagner was staying there with his wife (at the time, Minna) to take the waters. But he preferred to bathe himself in literature, studying Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival – in which he first came across the character Lohengrin – and decided to devote himself to the supposedly cheerful story of the Mastersingers of Nuremberg. One day it hit him: "I had only just got into my bath around noon, when I was seized by such a longing to write my Lohengrin, that I was incapable of taking the requisite time for the bath and, already impatient, after only a few minutes jumped out, hardly taking the time to dress myself properly again, and ran like a madman to my residence to put this urge down on paper. This scenario repeated itself for several days, until the detailed scenic plans of Lohengrin were completed." The prose sketch (August 3, 1845) was followed by the elaborated version in verse, which he completed on November 27, 1845 simultaneously with rehearsals for Tannhäuser in Dresden. While drafting the text, he had already come up with the basic musical structure.
One evening, while Wagner was reading his poetry to an illustrious group, Robert Schumann, who was also present, said that he could not imagine how it could be turned into an opera. In fact, Wagner had already begun to turn away from the number opera in his Flying Dutchman and Tannhäuser in favour of the through-composed, symphonically determined music drama. Among all his contemporaries, Wagner was the only one able to guess what was to further emerge from this when he completed his final romantic opera, Lohengrin.
In 1846 he began work on the composition and completed it in the summer of 1847, following some interruptions. By the end of March 1848, he had orchestrated the entire score. Wagner had designed a "symbolic happening", "...which provided a meeting ground for mediaeval legends, Greek myths, legends of Christian saints, magical pagan tales and archetypical humans... Immediately after the prelude, the music generally outpaces the traditional operatic forms, uses the technique of the leitmotif, and in its glowing chromaticism and novel instrumentation penetrates to the limits later determined in Tristan": thus states Karl Schumann.
The première of Lohengrin, which had already been planned in Dresden, was cancelled because Kapellmeister Wagner had become increasingly aggressive, denouncing conditions in his place of work. He joined the rebels of the March Revolution and took to the barricades with them in May 1849.

Wagner – a revolutionary?
Compared to the social upheavals instigated by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, from today's perspective, Wagner the theatre-reformist pales into near-insignificance, his status at best relegated to that of a very minor revolutionary. Toting his "revolutionary-art" interests, he leapt on to the great train of revolution, although perhaps (in his "action-hero" zeal) confounding his "revolution"(a revolution taking place in the top echelons of society), with what was monarchistic, submissive to authority and undemocratic; and therefore, in the context of the revolution, reactionary. Later, Heinrich and Thomas Mann emphasized these characteristics of Wagner's political thinking with all their oppressive consequences.
Anyway, Richard Wagner could hardly be considered more seditious than Robert Schumann, who spent the months of the Dresden barricades hiding anxiously in a house on the outskirts of the city, while his wife Clara was left to cope with the day-to-day problems. It is true, though, that after the suppression of the uprisings Kapellmeister Wagner was placed as a political person in the black-list of the victors, and a warrant was put out for his arrest as a compromiser. He escaped into exile in Zurich, where he was to spend the next nine years. Much more important, however, is that Wagner's real and world-changing revolution took place in the field of music – something that was of no interest to any government of the day.

A long way back
Richard Wagner chose his colleague Franz Liszt – who was only two years his senior and held an exalted position in the music world of Weimar – to conduct the première of Lohengrin before it would be completely forgotten. Meanwhile in Zurich, he was busy writing Tristan und Isolde, Das Rheingold, Die Walküre, and parts of Siegfried. Liszt agreed to the proposition; in fact, he was highly enthusiastic about the project, not only after reading Wagner's glowing letters from afar, but also more directly after viewing the innovative content of the music: and on August 28, 1850, he performed the monumental work, making use of the limited funds of the Weimar Theatre. With the help of Liszt's intelligent musical analyses, clever lobbying and surprisingly modern marketing strategies, within just a few years Lohengrin had conquered the German-language theatre scene. Among others, the young King Ludwig II of Bavaria (who was born in 1845, the year in which Wagner wrote the first Lohengrin sketches) was enchanted by the first performance given in Munich in 1858. Thus, the foundation stone was laid for the future close relationship between Ludwig and Wagner, even though the composer himself, at this time, had not even seen his Lohengrin performed on stage. For that did not happen until in 1861, in Vienna, after an amnesty made it possible for the conductor, who had formerly been on the 'wanted' list, to return to Germany.

The music – the true miracle
"The main characteristic of the music of this opera is such unity of conception and style, that there is no melodic phrase, much less an ensemble piece, or really any place in the opera that can be understood as separate from the whole in its peculiarity and its true sense. Everything is connected, everything is linked, everything is intensified. Everything is very closely fused with the subject, and cannot be divorced from this." The personal experience penned down by Franz Liszt here with regard to Lohengrin utterly delighted Richard Wagner. Clearly Liszt had understood what Wagner was trying to achieve – and was soon to develop in a much clearer manner.
However, for the time being, his work was dominated by phrases consisting of four and eight bars. Lohengrin does not contain any through-composed musical prose as does Der Ring. The scenes are separated from each other tonally. Transitions do not occur imperceptibly as in later works. Nevertheless, the main motifs of the themes already serve to identify people and situations; they can be inserted at any time during the course of the opera, which is composed according to the principles of the symphony. Wagner consistently applies Beethoven's style of dealing with themes, his treatment of the development with regard to the sonata form, to his opera, so that the internal correlations arise solely from the music. The text and action appear in part to be simple props. This is particularly true with regard to the prelude to Act I. This solemn study in crescendo immediately fascinated both Berlioz and Tchaikovsky, and to this day, it still creates the special atmosphere that dominates the entire opera.

Iridescent prelude
Wagner managed to literally enchant his audiences with a novel effect: an eightfold division of the violins in the orchestra. Where we normally have first and second violins, the high strings are now sub-divided into four solo voices and four further choral voices. In 1871, his colleague Tchaikovsky praised him as follows: "Here, for the first time, Wagner has applied these potent orchestral effects, which all contemporary composers have since used in order to express deeply poetic moments in their music. Even the illustrious maestro Verdi was most happy to borrow from Wagner to illustrate the final languishing of the dying Traviata: this effect is achieved by the use of stringed instruments in the highest positions."
Later, the orchestral magician Richard Strauss would add tersely that Lohengrin represented the only significant advance in orchestration since Berlioz. However, Berlioz – although himself an as yet unequalled master in achieving undreamt-of sound effects from a symphony orchestra – was likewise full of enthusiasm for the Prelude to Wagner's Lohengrin, stating as follows: "Here we have, in fact, an enormous, slow crescendo that, after having reached the highest level of sonority, returns in the opposite direction to its starting point, and concludes in an almost inaudible harmonic rustling. I do not know which relationships exist between this form of overture and the dramatic idea of ??the opera, but without going into this question, I believe this piece, if regarded simply as a symphonic work in itself, is admirable in every respect. Although it does not contain an actual melody, the harmonic transitions themselves are melodious and delightful, and despite the slowness of the gradual crescendo and decrescendo, one's interest does not wane for a moment. And one may add that this is a miracle of orchestration, both in the delicacy and the brightness of the tonal colours, and that towards the end one becomes aware of a most ingeniously devised, continually diatonic bass soaring upwards, while the other voices are descending. Moreover, nothing in this beautiful piece is harsh; it is as soft and euphonious as it is powerful and sonorous: as far as I am concerned, it is a masterpiece."

"Key" characters – an art in itself
Although Berlioz could not have known how the prelude was related to the dramatic idea of ??the opera, one is even more highly impressed by the manner in which Wagner keeps the tension going. The bright A major of the Prelude is the tonality used to depict Lohengrin, long before he arrives in the boat. The uneventful (at least, as far at the action is concerned) sounds symbolize the world of the Grail. However, we only discover this during the course of the Grail narration, in which Lohengrin reveals his identity in Act III; or rather, is forced to reveal it, as Elsa has asked him to do so. Later, the evocation of the sensation of intoxication at the unveiling of the sacred vessel was to provide Wagner with two musical episodes, each containing about half an hour of music, in his Parsifal.
So while Lohengrin claimed the key of A major for himself – Christian Friedrich
Daniel Schubart's Tonartencharakteristik (= Key Characteristics) dating from 1799 was the accepted canon of the 19th-century composer – Elsa was allocated the key of A flat major. Not content with having her consistently a semitone behind Lohengrin, Wagner frequently even places her in the sinister shadow of A-flat minor.
Her innocence regarding the accusation of fratricide is evident – in the melody. However, there is a fatal resemblance between the keys and corresponding harmonies used to illustrate both Elsa's legitimate expressions of innocence and her guilt complex when she finally poses the forbidden question. Before she puts her inevitable question, however, there is a resounding and eloquent silence full of embarrassed-sounding musical gestures at the end of the second act. The notorious question is already on Elsa's tongue, but she is still just able to contain it. To quote Carl Dahlhaus: "... Perhaps the opera, contrary to the popular concept of a robust opera plot, comes most into its own in those places where the action is at a standstill – as in the minster scene in Lohengrin and the quintet from Die
Meistersinger – and it seems as if the music expresses more than people know and say...". Wagner directly interweaves purity with the fallibility of the female (with the aid of the "neutral" tool of music!) to incredible, yes, to demagogical effect – not only in the case of Kundry, but right here already, with Elsa.

The strong and the weak
Ortrud, on the other hand, behaves in a relatively straightforward manner. Wagner characterizes her in a letter to Liszt (January 30,1852), thus dealing the modern emancipation movement one of his infamous blows. Therefore, Ortrud is "a woman ... who – does not know love. This says it all, and says it at its most dreadful. Her essence is pure politics. A man of politics is disgusting, but a woman of politics is horrific: it was my job to portray this horrific creature." Ortrud is definitely the evil one, she is assigned the key of F sharp minor (Schubart!) – and thus is in startling proximity to Lohengrin, F sharp minor being the relative minor of A major.
The stranger's question-prohibition – floating thematically like the sword of Damocles over many parts of the opera – takes place in the key of F minor. In the key scene of the second act, the great "psychological ensemble" (Rene Leibowitz) consisting of Lohengrin, Elsa, Telramund, Ortrud and King Heinrich, the "vote of confidence" is intensified alternately in C minor and C major. Blazing reproach and stoic appeasement alternate with courageous soul-soothing and honourable protestations, and lead eventually to a (musical) repetition of the question-prohibition in a brazen F minor key. Wagner responds to this in C major, the key used to depict all that is magnificent, hymnic and pure. But how? To quote Carl Dahlhaus: "Beside the F minor corresponding to the question-prohibition, thundering on in an overpowering fortissimo, we hear the final C-major chord in a faint pianissimo: an unsubstantial, hollowed-out and, as it were, implausible major."
The complex entanglement of the keys representing the different characters corresponds to a motivic relationship between the themes of Lohengrin, Elsa, the Grail and the question-prohibition, of which previously little commentary has been made, despite its remarkable nature. This relationship is presented, namely, as a rhythmic group consisting of dotted crotchets/quavers with an accompanying semiquaver and subsequent two minims and/or one minim and a crotchet: one comes across it in all the above-mentioned motifs!

The choruses direct it
Of course, the key of E major has to make an appearance in Lohengrin. Whereas in Parsifal it is reserved for the chorus "Höchsten Heiles Wunder" in the third act, Wagner uses the E-major key in Lohengrin to spectacular effect: the men (and some women also) first celebrate the arrival of the swan-knight in F major, and then in E major during the repetition of their ecstatic fortissimo exclamation: "A miracle! A miracle." Yes, the choruses: in Lohengrin, they carry the plot forward for a great deal of the opera. But do they really? After having completed a thorough study of the ancient tragedies – and quite in contrast to the theoretical considerations he penned down a few years later in his Oper und Drama (1851) – Wagner deploys the chorus as either an emotional commentator, a hysterically agitating mass of people, or a ceremonial "red carpet" laid down for the protagonists. Incidentally, Johann Sebastian Bach had already done all that, too. But Wagner went out of his way to avoid the effects that were considered most impressive in French and Italian opera; namely, large independent choral scenes capable of developing their effects by themselves (and claiming their own applause). Wagner integrated the choirs in a symphonic sense into the "gesamtwerk" that is Lohengrin.
With one single exception: the famous "Bridal Chorus". Although it is stage music, and therefore not an integral part of the dramatic action, registry offices world-wide do the music a profound injustice by playing it as a "regular number" (= "Here comes the bride," etc.). To quote Carl Dahlhaus: "...The Bridal Chorus, which should never be played out of context, sounds different when one also hears the futility cast over the scene by its shadow. The innocuousness of the music led to its false popularity then has quite a depressing effect."

The music says it all
An early model for the leitmotif technique is provided by the dialogue between Ortrud and Telramund at the beginning of the second act: to be more precise, its central part, with Telramund's angry yet admiring outburst "Du wilde Seherin" (= you savage seer). This passage stands out especially against the background of the still widespread traditional operatic conventions to be found in Lohengrin. It is neither recitative nor aria; rather, it declaims the text in accordance with dramatic necessity. Rhythmic periodicity is abolished in favour of irregular metrical phrases – again a result of dramaturgical rigour. In this music, Wagner denies the listener regular, and therefore calming, parameters. The orchestra takes over the task of providing orientation and significance: the question-prohibition theme is cunningly "tossed about" by the Ortrud motif and formally absorbed, and significant chord sequences characterize her as a sorceress. These quotes are not simply helpful reminders, they form the substance of the scene itself!
In contrast, after Elsa's infringement of the prohibition, Lohengrin's great remorse sounds highly artificial and theatrical. "O Elsa! What have you done to me?" As if he had not known this from the beginning, the lady-killer. According to Carl Dahlhaus, Lohengrin betrays himself by means of a
"... melodically rather uncharacteristic piece of opera music, with an at times unpleasant momentum." However, in the subsequent Grail narration ("In fernem Land", = in a distant land), he bids a musical farewell to humanity, long before the opera comes to an end. For a moment, the return of the Prelude from the first act, now with vocal embellishment, marks the end of the inner plot as shaped by the music. Lohengrin returns (a broken man, as is absolutely clear from Wagner's sketches) to his former life as a knight of the Grail. Thus Wagner evokes anew the truly exciting situation that the music itself takes over, in a passage in which the action has apparently come to a standstill, in order to tell the real story. The art-work of the future has been born – an issue of the music itself.

Steffen Georgi
English translation: Fiona J. Stroker-Gale

Steffen Georgi
English translation: Fiona J. Stroker-Gale

top