Opera Plots I - MDC Faculty Home Pages

scheming Telramund, whom he defeats, and who is consequently disgraced and sent to wander
forth with his wife, Ortrud, who is his evil genius and a secret sorceress, who is determined to get
back their lost power.
In Act 2 the disgraced pair appear outside the palace, where Ortrud cunningly succeeds in
attracting the attention of Elsa and gaining her sympathy for their fallen state; and the gentle
maiden promises to obtain pardon for Telramund, and takes Ortrud into her train once more. The
sorceress now proceeds to put doubts of her betrotheds good faith into Elsas mind, and to insinuate
that he must be bad if he will not reveal his identity; and Elsa, though passionately loving the
noble Knight, is made so uneasy by these cruel and Iealous suggestions, that she determines to
have her doubts and curiosity set at rest.
In Act 3, therefore, after the wedding ceremony is over and the bride and bridegroom have been
conducted to their nuptial chamber, Elsa, unable to restrain her feelings longer, the seeds of doubt
and suspicion sown by the crafty Ortrud having taken complete possession of her, now beseeches
her husband to reveal himself to her. Full of grief at her distrust, Lohengrin begs her to desist from
questioning him; but Elsa, losing all control of herself, declares she is unsatisfied, and finally
passionately demands to be told his name and origin. At this moment Telramund breaks into the
room with some of his followers, in an attempt to murder the stranger Knight, against whom he
has such a bitter grudge; but Lohengrin, with a single blow of his sword, stretches the assassin
dead at his feet. Then, as the commotion brings in the attendants, he gives the fainting Elsa into
their charge, announcing that he will declare his identity before the King and his lords on the
morrow. The last scene takes place on the banks of the Scheldt, where, in the presence of the King
and Court, the stranger Knight declares that, compelled by the rash demands of Elsa, he is bound
to reveal himself; and he announces that he is Lohengrin, the son of Parsifal, and a Knight of the
Holy Grail, whose Knights are only permitted to be absent on good works so long as they remain
unknown, and having revealed his identity he is now compelled to return to his holy companions.
He takes a sorrowful farewell of Elsa, and is about to sail away, when the triumphant Ortrud
hastens forward and declares that the swan is the young Prince Gottfried, whom she had herself
thus transformed by means of her sorcery, and who would have regained his human form now had
Elsa not yielded to distrust of the noble Knight he served. Lohengrin, however, hears her words;
and by his own heaven-given powers, he disenchants the swan, and presents the transformed
prince to his weeping sister. A white dove now flutters down to draw the skiff; and as Elsa beholds
the dazzling Knight sailing out of her sight, she is filled with such grief and despair that she falls
lifeless into her brothers arms as the curtain descends.
182. THE MASTER-SINGERS OF NUREMBERG
Opera Comique in Three Acts By Richard Wagner
Libretto By the Composer
First Produced Munich, June, 1868
Chief Characters Eva, Magdalena, Hans Sachs, Walther von Stolzing, Beckmesser, David Pogner
THIS opera was intended by Wagner as a humorous and satirical protest against the critics of his
time, who, hidebound by the old conventional forms of opera, were only too ready to kick against