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Richard appears upon the scene, and the passionate love-duet follows, "M'ami, m'ami." A buffo trio closes the act, Sam and Tom supplying the humorous element with their laughing refrain.
In the second act Elisabeth has heard of her knight's return; she enters the hall of song and pours forth her feelings of thankfulness; Tannhäuser comes in and begs to be favoured; there is a long love-duet; and then preparations are made for a musical tournament.
This love-duet was resumed and presently, when the lovers had made their exit, Ritmagar was seen gleefully watching while the red sun dropped slowly down the sky, sinking at last below the rim of the lake.
While the trees wave in the wind and the sun shines, the men shout merrily, and the huntsmen blow away at their horns and Tannhäuser has returned to his former healthy life. In the second act we have Elisabeth's greeting to the hall of song, very charming; a duet with Tannhäuser, very fine in parts, but not a true love-duet; the popular march; and then the tournament.
Nowhere is the music unmelodious or uninteresting, but it is elastic and pliable and changes its character with the emotional intensity of the dramatic situation, being more subdued in parts of the first act, asserting itself whenever rage, irony, tenderness, or other emotion call for expression; omnipotent in the great love-duet, culminating in the nocturne, and once more soaring in highest ecstasy in Isolde's dissolution, with endless gradations in the portions between.
He kisses her, the motive from the love-duet appearing in the orchestra; then, after a hurried dialogue, stifles her. He then kills himself, his last words being a repetition of those in the duet, while the strings tenderly give out the melody again.
Brangaena is sent to keep watch, and Isolda throws down the torch to the Death motive. Tristan rushes in, and the most passionate love-duet ever written begins. After the first ecstasies have subsided the lovers converse. They must talk about something what should it be? As Wagner's thoughts were occupied with Schopenhauer at the time, he makes them talk a sort of pseudo-Schopenhauer.
A hurried recitative passage between Iago and Roderigo introduces a drinking scene in which Iago sings a very original and expressive brindisi with rollicking responses by the chorus. The quarrel follows with a vigorous and agitated accompaniment, and the act comes to a close with a beautiful love-duet between Othello and Desdemona.
That sailor's dance is to me as odious as anything in Meyerbeer, and the melody which ends the love-duet is scarcely more tolerable. On the other hand, not even in "The Valkyrie" did Wagner write more picturesquely weird music than most of the first act.
The persecuted girl sings a beautiful prayer, at the close of which Vindex joins her in a love-duet, which will always remain as one of the most refined and noble products of Rubinstein's skill in harmony. The next number is one of almost equal beauty, a duet for Chrysa and Epicharis, the motive of which is a cradle song.
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