ch never
grows old of the struggle of good and evil for a human soul, the tale of
a remorseful sinner won from the powers of hell by the might of a pure
woman's love.

There is a legend which tells that when the gods and goddesses fled from
their palace on Olympus before the advance of Christianity, Venus betook
herself to the North, and established her court in the bowels of the
earth, beneath the hill of Hoerselberg in Thuringia. There we find the
minstrel Tannhaeuser at the opening of the opera. He has left the world
above, its strifes and its duties, for the wicked delights of the grotto
of Venus. There he lies in the embraces of the siren goddess, while life
passes in a ceaseless orgy of sinful pleasure. But the poet wearies of
his amorous captivity, and would fain return to the earth once more. In
vain the goddess pleads, in vain she calls up new scenes of ravishing
delight, he still prays to be gone. Finally he calls on the sainted name
of Mary, and Venus with her nymphs, grotto, palace and all, sink into
the earth with a thunder-clap, while Tannhaeuser, when he comes to his
senses once more, finds himself kneeling upon the green grass on the
slope of a sequestered valley, lulled by the tinkling bells of the flock
and the piping of a shepherd from a rock hard by. The pious chant of
pilgrims, passing on their way to Rome, wakens his slumbering
conscience, and bids him expiate his guilt by a life of abstinence and
humiliation. His meditations are interrupted by the appearance of the
Landgrave of Thuringia, his liege lord, who is hunting with Wolfram von
Eschinbach, Walther von der Vogelweide, and other minstrel-knights of
the Wartburg; but his newly awakened sense of remorse forbids him to
return with them to the castle, until Wolfram breathes the name of the
Landgrave's niece Elisabeth, the saintly maiden who has drooped and
pined since Tannhaeuser disappeared from the singing contests at the
Wartburg. The thought of human love touches his heart with warm
sympathy, and he gladly hastens to the castle with his newly found
friends.

In the second act we are at the Wartburg, in the Hall of Song in which
those tournaments of minstrelsy were held, for which the castle was
celebrated in the middle ages. Elisabeth enters, bringing a greeting to
the hall, whose threshold she has not crossed since Tannhaeuser's
mysterious departure. Her joyous tones have scarcely ceased when
Tannhaeuser, led by Wolfram, appears and falls