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Elisabeth enters, bringing a greeting to the hall, whose threshold she has not crossed since Tannhäuser's mysterious departure. Her joyous tones have scarcely ceased when Tannhäuser, led by Wolfram, appears and falls at the feet of the youthful Princess. Her pure spirit cannot conceive aught of dishonour in his absence, and she welcomes him back to her heart with girlish trust.
Contents: The Lord's Prayer in B A Son of Liszt A Chopin of the Gutter The Piper of Dreams An Emotional Acrobat Isolde's Mother The Rim of Finer Issues An Ibsen Girl Tannhäuser's Choice The Red-Headed Piano Player Brynhüd's Immolation The Quest of the Elusive An Involuntary Insurgent Hunding's Wife The Corridor of Time Avatar The Wegstaffes give a Musicale The Iron Virgin Dusk of the Gods Siegfried's Death Intermezzo A Spinner of Silence The Disenchanted Symphony Music the Conqueror.
Tannhäuser's music grows in intensity, and Wagner is careful not to give us a setback by allowing the other singers to throw Wolfram-ian cold douches over us; on the contrary, they get excited, too; and the orchestra is let loose with them by degrees, until in the last outburst it is blazing and crackling as though it had gone as completely mad as Tannhäuser himself.
But at that moment Tannhäuser's avowal of the joys he had experienced with Venus in Mount Horsel had shocked the Landgrave's pious court. The dames and the wives of the burgesses had hastened away, leaving their husbands to avenge the affront offered to their modesty.
The story of Tannhauser's sojourn within this magical cavern is only one of many, nor do they all end like that of the minstrel knight. Undeterred by the awful tales told by monks and priests, poets and romancers sang the glories and the pleasures of the cave as well as its gruesome punishments.
Then his old companions come up, recognise him, tell him Elisabeth has patiently awaited his return, and so induce him to go with them. The second act opens on the Hall of Song. Elisabeth thinks over her grief and longing during Tannhäuser's absence, and sings her delight now that he has come back to her.
Hunters' horns are presently heard from all sides; enter Tannhäuser's former friends, Walther, Wolfram, Biterolf with the rest; they try to persuade him to return to his former life with them, but in vain, until Wolfram tells him that by his singing he had won the heart of the Landgrave's daughter Elisabeth, and she has pined ever since at his unaccountable disappearance.
The three things up to now that have got me most on that side, got me on the very raw of it I'll tell you now, now that I can't see your amused eyes looking at me with that little quizzical questioning in them the three things that have broken my heart each time I've come across them and made me only want to sob and sob, are when Kurwenal, mortally wounded, crawls blindly to Tristan's side and says, "Schilt mich nicht dass der Treue auch mitkommt" and Siegfried's dying "Brunnhild, heilige Braut," and Tannhauser's dying "Heilige Elisabeth, bitte fur mich."
There are many parallels in classic story and folklore of the incident of Tannhauser's sojourn with Venus. I mention but a few. There are the episodes of Ulysses and Calypso, Ulysses and Circe, Numa and Egeria, Rinaldo and Armida, Prince Ahmed and Peri Banou. Less familiar are the folk-tales which Mr.
There is no question here of poetical license, for Wolfram sings the apostrophe after her retreating figure, and the last chord of his postlude is interrupted by Tannhauser's words, "Ich horte Harfenschlag!"
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