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The business of a champion for Elsa being called for, the moments of suspense, the prayers of Elsa and her attendant maidens, the fiery impatience of Telramund and the premature triumph of Ortrud are all done with Wagner's consummate skill in writing purely theatrical music; and when the swan and the hero are sighted the excitement is worked up with the same skill to a glorious triumph, and we hear the Lohengrin, "as hero," theme in its full splendour.
As Ortrud was ill, "Lohengrin" could not be given this week. Frau Moritz is a very amiable and excellent woman and artist. She is studying Elsa and Senta, and is quite determined to make active propaganda for your operas. Moritz is going to read your "Ring of the Nibelung" this month at Wiesbaden. When I go to Carlsruhe, I shall again visit Moritz at Wiesbaden.
Frau X. is announced to sing Ortrud on the 8th of March. She is to sing the part twice, and then appear as Antonina in "Belisario." If she pleases her engagement is very probable. I shall write very soon to Herr A., who sent me your letter by way of introduction, and I have in the meantime asked Herr von Beaulieu to let him make his debut as Lohengrin or Tannhauser.
Elsa runs to the arms of the Protector. Receiving her and glancing naturally about for explanation, he beholds the dangerous Ortrud, whom his clear eye reads, restored to splendour, part of the wedding-train, and remarks upon it with amazement to the trembling bride. "What do I see? That unhappy woman at your side?" "My deliverer," weeps Elsa, "shield me from her!
Zigesar has also asked X. to sing Ortrud, and has offered her as well as Tichatschek very decent terms, but her answer is somewhat vague and undecided: "Unless I have to go to England at that time," etc.
In the next scene he reveals himself, and the swan returns to take him away. Ortrud mocks him and tells how she, after all, has triumphed, for she changed Elsa's brother into a swan; Lohengrin kneels and prays; the swan disappears and the missing brother springs up; a dove descends and is attached by Lohengrin to the boat, and he goes back to Montsalvat.
But this is not merely an obstinate, morbid mood in Ortrud; her passion holds her with the full weight of a misguided, undeveloped, objectless feminine desire for love: for that reason she is terribly grand.
Simple Elsa's heart melts at the sight, really out of all reason soft, out of all reason unsuspecting. Yet she is infinitely sweet, in her exaggeration of goodness, when she not only pardons, but begs pardon of this fiendish enemy for what the latter may have had to suffer through her. She eagerly puts out her hands to lift Ortrud from her knees. "God help me!
Elsa, accused and threatened by her guardian, had by blanched face and terrified demeanour, he states, confessed guilt. A fearful revulsion of feeling toward her had thereupon taken place in him; he had relinquished the right to her hand, bestowed upon him by her father, and taken to himself a wife more according to his heart, Ortrud, descended from Radbot, Prince of the Frisians.
Frederick was a Christian, mediæval style, and he implicitly believes that Ortrud can call up wicked spirits, and by their aid weave enchantments when the God of the East is not looking. The same may be said of the king, and indeed all the characters in Lohengrin: again I say the opera is a fairy drama in which these things must be assumed and accepted.
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