ther _Rienzi_ and a huge popular success had long
since melted away: the creative instinct in Wagner was master of the
situation; never again did he plan anything to please the public, save,
comical to relate, when he began on the story of _Tristan_.

In _The Flying Dutchman_ Wagner had exploited the uncanny, the terror
and mystery of gray winter seas; in _Tannhaeuser_ he turned to the
conflict between the gross, lurid passions of man and the sane, pure
side of his nature; and now, in _Lohengrin_, he was to give us an opera
which for sheer sustained loveliness has only one parallel in his
works--the _Mastersingers_. It is the most delicately beautiful thing he
wrote; its freshness is the freshness that seems unlikely to fade with
the passage of time. Curiously, too, while full of the spirit of
Weber--it is the most Weberesque of all his operas--of Weber who loved
darksome woods, haunted ruins and all the machinery of the romantics, it
is full of sweet sunlight and cool morning winds: the atmosphere of
Montsalvat, the land where it is always dawn, pervades it. As a painter
in music of landscape, seascape, of storm, rain amongst the leaves,
spring mornings, and calm sunny woodland scenes, Wagner has no equal.
There is nothing theatrical on this side of his art: the footlights and
back-cloths disappear, and the very thing itself is before us.

In or about 1847 _Lohengrin_ was finished. The tale is of the simplest.
Elsa is in distress. She is the daughter of the late Duke, and her
brother, the heir to the title and lands, has been changed into a swan
by the enchantments of Ortruda, wife of Frederick, who says that Elsa
has murdered him. Ortruda's tale is believed and Elsa is charged with
the crime before the King, Henry the Fowler. Frederick brings the charge
and claims the possessions and everything as the rightful heir. Henry
asks whether she is willing that some champion should fight on her
behalf. She consents. The herald calls for the champion; no one appears,
and the case is about to be decided against her when a knight is seen in
a magic boat on the river drawn by a swan. He offers to fight for her on
one condition: that she will never ask his name or whence he comes. She
promises, and in a few minutes Frederick is overcome and, with his wife,
disgraced, and the act ends with a regular opera finale. Next, Ortruda
comes as a suppliant in the night to Elsa, gains admittance, and poisons
her mind with doubts about Lohen