282. Lohengrin (Wagner)

• Romantische Oper in 3 acts
• Composer / libretto: Richard Wagner
• First performed: Deutsches Nationaltheater, Weimar, Germany, 28^th August 1850, conducted by Franz Liszt

---

Characters

HEINRICH DER VOGLER [Henry the Fowler], German king	Bass	August Höfer
LOHENGRIN	Tenor	Karl Beck
ELSA VON BRABANT	Soprano	Rosa von Milde
HERZOG GOTTFRIED, her brother		Hellstedt
FRIEDRICH VON TELRAMUND, Brabantian count	Baritone	Hans von Milde
ORTRUD, his wife	Soprano	Josephine Fastlinger
The King’s Herald	Bass	August Pätsch
Four Brabantian nobles	Tenors and basses
Four noble youths	Sopranos and contraltos
Saxon and Thuringian counts and nobles. Brabantian counts and nobles. Noblewomen. Noble boys. Men. Women. Servants.

SETTING: Setting: Antwerp, first half of the 10^th century [sometime between 925 and 933]

---

Once upon a time, Lohengrin was my favourite of Wagner’s operas: a mediaeval fairy tale about damsels in distress, knights in shining armour, sorceresses, enchantments, and the Holy Grail. But just as Ortrud planted doubt in Elsa’s mind, so my reservations about Lohengrin have increased.

Lohengrin presents a pre-Enlightenment worldview where faith and authority supersede reason and inquiry. Curiosity ends in disaster; an inquiring mind will lead you astray. Believe, and do not ask for reasons why. Augustine and John Chrysostrom would approve; Richard Dawkins assuredly would not.

Friedrich von Telramund, guardian to the late Duke of Brabant’s children, and next in line to the throne, accuses his niece Elsa of murdering her brother Gottfried, who has disappeared. He claims he has proof, but refuses to give it, because he insists that he must be taken at his word. “Her crime was reliably testified; but to have to dispel your doubts with a witness would truly offend my pride!”¹ Honour trumps any call for evidence. In this society, who speaks is more important than what they say.

A nameless knight (Lohengrin, we learn three hours later) heeds Elsa’s prayer, and comes to defend her from this charge. In his turn, he, too, demands absolute faith, and her hand in marriage. Never, the knight commands, shall Elsa ask him whence he came, his name, or his origin; he must remain a mystery. (It is a very Protestant idea: justification by faith. Wagner, of course, was raised as a Lutheran.)

Elsa, of course, eventually does ask the knight his name, credentials, and vital statistics. On their wedding night. (Rather sensible questions, really, to ask one’s partner in life.) It’s one of the shortest honeymoons in opera. The knight slaughters Telramund (who had been lurking, rather in most ungentlemanly fashion, outside the bridal suite door), then retires, the marriage unconsummated. The next morning, the knight announces that he is a knight of the Holy Grail, hight Lohengrin, and that he must decamp forthwith. Oh, and the swan that brought him to Brabant is really her brother, labouring under an enchantment cast by Telramund’s wife, the sorceress Ortrud. Lohengrin leaves, this time by dove, and Elsa falls lifeless. (Wagner compared his legend to the myth of Zeus and Semele.)

For an opera about forbidden questions, Lohengrin raises plenty of questions itself. Like: why is Lohengrin riding his brother-in-law-to-be? How did the swan get to Monsalvat, where the Grail lives? And where does Elsa stand in the pecking order vis-à-vis the swan?

But, more importantly: When Elsa is tormented by the fear that her new husband will leave her, and wants to know who he is, he commands Elsa to trust him implicitly, just as he believed in her innocence.² But hang on! How can Lohengrin claim to have had FAITH in Elsa’s innocence when he KNEW that she was innocent, because the swan that he came in on was her brother? Moreover, just as Elsa feared, Lohengrin planned to depart after a year anyway.³

Nor, Lohengrin states, do the king, the nobles, or the people have any right to question this self-styled Protector of Brabant. Asking questions – “Who is this guy who just appointed himself head honcho? Where does he come from? How did he rise to power? Why do I have to trust him blindly?” – is frowned upon. Instead, everyone must enthusiastically ‘Sieg! Heil!’⁴ and follow him to war. Unsurprisingly, Hitler was a fan; Lohengrin, in fact, is where he got the title of Führer from.

Lohengrin is problematic, one of a line of warrior-redeemer-saviour-heroes in Wagner’s works. They are an unsavoury lot. Rienzi is a dictator; and Siegfried, the Aryan pin-up boy, is a brawny moron. Parsifal, the holy fool, is the most palatable. They are Heroes, and objects of adulation. The audience is not meant to question them. Meyerbeer, on the other hand, does question these figures; his Prophète is an impostor, his claims to divinity exposed as sham.

---

Lohengrin is another step towards Musikdrama. The basic unit is the scene, as in post-Gluckian tragédie lyrique. Far more than in Tannhäuser, there are few detachable items; only Elsa’s Dream in Act I and the Grail Narration in Act III are formal set piece ‘arias’. Instead, arioso, recitative, and choruses are folded into enormous static tableaux. Vocal writing and orchestration are often exquisite, however. Wagner uses leitmotifs more than in his earlier operas, too, notably the Grail motif (plugged in the prelude) and the motif of the Question.

Wagner himself did not hear the opera until 1861, eleven years after its première. He had fled Germany in May 1849, following his involvement in the Dresden uprising. Liszt staged it in Weimar; Wagner’s future father-in-law considered Lohengrin “a sublime work from beginning to end; tears came to my heart in many places. The entire opera being a single and indivisible wonder, I cannot stop to detail any particular passage, combination, or effect. Just as a pious ecclesiastic underlined word by word the entire Imitation of Christ, it might well happen that I underline your entire Lohengrin note by note…”

Verdi, too, thought Lohengrin the best of Wagner’s operas⁵, although he admitted to dozing off at a performance in Vienna, overcome by its torpor⁶. Meyerbeer, too, admired the opera.⁷ On the other hand, reviewing Lohengrin in 1891, the first Wagner opera performed there since Tannhäuser 30 years before, Arthur Pougin⁸ found the opera fatiguing and too long, despite some superb pages; many in the audience discreetly yawned for a quarter of an hour.

The Prelude (Vorspiel) is a tone poem showing the Grail descending from heaven, and then going away again. And sublime it is, too, even if one wag called it a squeakiness and a brassiness. It begins with very high, sweet, divided violins, then the Grail manifests in a blaze of glory, represented by kettledrums and cymbals. It slowly disappears, leaving the listener yearning.

Berlioz considered it a masterpiece.⁹ “One could describe it by painting a picture with words like this <>. It’s essentially a slow and immense crescendo that, after reaching its peak in terms of volume, gradually returns to where it began, ending with a harmonious and almost imperceptible murmur. I’m not sure about the connection between this type of overture and the opera’s dramatic idea, but even considering it solely as a symphonic piece, I find it outstanding. While there aren’t distinct phrases, the harmonic progressions are melodious and charming, and the interest remains constant despite the gradual build-up and decline. Additionally, it’s a marvel of orchestration, showcasing both subtle shades and vibrant colors. Towards the end, there’s a clever idea where the bass steadily rises diatonically while the other parts descend. Furthermore, this beautiful piece lacks any harshness. It’s smooth, harmonious, and yet grand, powerful, and resonant.”

Act I (the banks of the Scheldt, where King Henry holds court) is ceremonial and ritualistic. The Herald summons the people; Telramund presents his case against Elsa; she recounts her vision; the king swears to wield neither sword nor shield until the truth is known; he orders trial by combat (so much for the mediaeval legal mind); Telramund and Elsa in turn are asked whether they accept; four trumpeters stand at the judgement ring and blow a challenge to the four corners of the compass; the third time, and as Elsa kneels in prayer, her champion arrives, by swan; he proposes to Elsa, and defeats Telramund. Throughout, the declamation and choruses are masterly, both the vigorous promises to fight and the awestruck reaction to Lohengrin’s arrival.

Elsa’s Dream, “Einsam in trüben Tagen”, in which she describes the knight coming to her rescue, is quite beautiful; it is effectively the prima donna’s entrance aria, and the last one in Wagner. The finale contains an imposing prayer quintet, and ends in an exciting stretta; it even has a Rossinian crescendo. At the end, Lohengrin is borne aloft on a shield by four strapping young men while Telramund, defeated and disgraced, falls senseless at Ortrud’s feet.

Telramund is one of Wagner’s more sympathetic antagonists, a forerunner to Gunther in the Ring. At first, he is proud but sincere, convinced of Elsa’s guilt; ashamed of his defeat, Ortrud easily convinces him that his defeat was due to the knight’s black magic. Together, they plot to destroy the knight and make Elsa doubt him. Some recent productions have made Ortrud less villainous: a persecuted and dispossessed ‘heathen’, a wise woman, she stands for reason, and defies the patriarchy and the theocratic totalitarianism of Christianity. One director even makes Elsa guilty indeed of fratricide, and Ortrud the person who sees through her lies.

Act II, set at the citadel of Antwerp that night, opens with a sinister orchestral prelude, with the Question motif played on the cor anglais. Telramund and Ortrud’s scene is compelling, ending in a brief but ominous duet, “Der Rache Werk”. The conspirators overhear Elsa, on the balcony above, pour out her heart to the night: “Euch Lüften, die mein Klagen”. As Elsa descends, Ortrud calls upon the German gods to aid her: Wotan, Freja, and Thor. Dawn breaks with the Morgenlied: the watchman’s reveille, between turret and distant tower, the music quickening as the fortress comes to life. The next tableau is a grand opera finale of epic proportions; Elsa famously takes half an hour to 45 minutes to cross the stage.

I have never much liked Act III. A brassy, very emphatic introduction leads into the famous Bridal Chorus (the wedding tune that Mendelssohn didn’t write). The Elsa / Lohengrin scene is a tedious domestic dispute, easily the least interesting part of the opera; it is a foretaste of the excruciating real estate / nagging scenes in Rheingold and Walküre. At least the start of this 20-minute scene is pretty. Much of the final scene is as strident as Rienzi: the brassy (if splendid) Morgenröte; and appeals to German chauvinism (“Für deutsches Land das deutsches Schwert”). The Grail Narration, “In fernem Land”, is either justly celebrated, or oddly placid and even bland, depending on what mood one is in. In A major, it contains a leap to an A6 on ‘Grail’; make of that what you will.

But then Lohengrin is a curious mixture of beauty, bombast, and boredom. It’s certainly no longer my favourite Wagner. For once, I haven’t given this opera any stars; and I don’t know whether I would give it four stars or two. You might say I have doubts, and that Lohengrin is an unresolved question.

---

Suggested recordings

Listen to: Jess Thomas (Lohengrin), Elisabeth Grümmer (Elsa), Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (Telramund), Christa Ludwig (Ortrud), Gottlob Frick (König Heinrich), and Otto Wiener, with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Otto Kempe; Vienna, 1963; EMI.

Watch: Plácido Domingo (Lohengrin), Robert Lloyd (König Heinrich), Cheryl Studer (Elsa), Hartmut Welker (Telramund), Dunja Vejzovic (Ortrud), and Georg Tichy (the Herald), with the orchestra of the Vienna State Opera, conducted by Claudio Abbado; Vienna, 1990; Arthaus Musik.

---

1. Act I, scene 2: Glaubwürdig ward ihr Frevel mir bezeugt; doch eurem Zweifel durch ein Zeugnis wehren, das stünde wahrlich übel meinem Stolz! ↩︎
2. Act III, scene 2: Höchstes Vertraun hast du mir schon zu danken, da deinem Schwur ich Glauben gern gewährt. ↩︎
3. Act III, scene 3: O Elsa! Nur ein Jahr an deiner Seite hätt ich als Zeuge deines Glücks ersehnt! Dann kehrte, selig in des Grals Geleite, dein Bruder wieder, den du tot gewähnt. ↩︎
4. Act I, scene 3: “Sieg! Sieg! Sieg! Heil! dir, Held!” ↩︎
5. Marcello Conati (ed.), Encounters with Verdi, trans. Richrd Stokes, Cornell University Press, 1984, p. 170: “I confess that I prefer his earlier operas to his later style, and consider that none surpasses Lohengrin.” ↩︎
6. Ibid, p. 345: “That music is fine in a German environment. Here in Italy, no. But in Germany it’s fine. The curtain is hardly up, the lights go down and you are left in the dark like quails. In that darkness, in that stale air, your mind is so benumbed that that sort of music is fine. I have heard Lohengrin in Vienna and I also dozed off in that torpor. Even the Germans dozed!” ↩︎
7. Robert Ignatius Letellier, Giacomo Meyerbeer: A Critical Life and Iconography, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2018, p. 296. ↩︎
8. Arthur Pougin, Le Ménestrel, 20 September 1891. ↩︎
9. Hector Berlioz, Journal des débats, 9 February 1860: « Les fragmens de Lohengrin brillent par des qualités plus saillantes que les œuvres précédentes. Il y a là, ce me semble, plus de nouveauté que dans le Tannhauser ; l’introduction, qui tient lieu d’ouverture à cet opéra, est une invention de Wagner de l’effet le plus saisissant. On pourrait en donner une idée en parlant aux yeux par cette figure < >. C’est en réalité un immense crescendo lent, qui, après avoir atteint le dernier degré de la force sonore, suivant la progression inverse, retourne au point d’où il était parti et finit dans un murmure harmonieux presque imperceptible. Je ne sais quels rapports existent en[tre] cette forme d’ouverture et l’idée dramatique de l’opéra ; mais, sans me préoccuper de cette question et en considérant le morceau comme une pièce symphonique seulement, je le trouve admirable de tout point. Il n’y a pas de phrase proprement dite, il est vrai, mais les enchaînemens harmoniques en sont mélodieux, charmans, et l’intérêt ne languit pas un instant malgré la lenteur du crescendo et celle de la décroissance. Ajoutons que c’est une merveille d’instrumentation dans les teintes douces comme dans le coloris éclatant, et qu’on y remarque, vers la fin, une basse montant toujours diatoniquement pendant que les autres parties descendent, dont l’idée est fort ingénieuse. Ce beau morceau d’ailleurs ne contient aucune espèce de duretés. C’est suave, harmonieux autant que grand, fort et retentissant. Pour moi, c’est un chef-d’œuvre. » ↩︎