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Villi, or in English, Wilis, are the spirits of affianced damsels, whose lovers have proved untrue. They rise from the earth at midnight, and assemble upon the highway attired in all their bridal finery. From midnight until dawn they wheel their wild dances and watch for their faithless lovers.
Duval's sufferings and the eventful reward of that good lady's constancy and truth; her companion reflecting, not on the charms of the actress he has lately been applauding, but on another face which haunts him now, as the wilis and water-sprites haunted their doomed votaries, and which must ever be as far out of reach as if it belonged indeed to some such being of another nature; thinking how a man might well risk imprisonment, transportation, hanging, for one kind glance of those bright eyes, one smile of those haughty, scornful lips; and comparing in bitter impatience that exotic beauty with the humble, homely creature at his side.
The second act opens with two orchestral movements, 'L'Abbandono, which describes the funeral of Anna, and 'La Tregenda, the dance of the Wilis. Robert now appears, torn by remorse, and pours forth his unavailing regrets. But the hour of repentance is past. Anna and her attendant Wilis rush on. The unfortunate man, in a kind of hypnotic trance, is drawn into their circling dance.
As I watched her, almost reclining in her partner's powerful grasp, her lips moving incessantly, though audibly only to him, as her head leaned against his shoulder, I thought of the old Rhineland tradition of the Wilis; then the daughter of Herodias came into my mind; and then that scarcely less murderous danseuse, at whose many-twinkling feet they say the second Napoleon cast his frail life down.
If one of the latter happen to pass, he is beguiled into the magic circle, and in the grasp of the relentless Wilis is whirled round and round until he sinks expiring upon the ground. In Puccini's opera, the scene is laid in the Black Forest. The characters are three in number Anna, her fiancé Robert, and her father Wilhelm Wulf. The first act opens with the betrothal of the lovers.
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