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Updated: May 15, 2025
Carl Foster," Sir Cyril explained smoothly, and she laid Alresca's head gently on the bare planks of the floor. "Will everyone kindly stand aside, and I will examine him." No one moved. The King continued his kingly examination of the prone form. Not a fold of Ortrud's magnificent black robe was disturbed.
This is, we believe, no part of any deep-laid plan of Ortrud's, though it does in the event help along her scheme; it is an uncontrollable outburst of temper at sight of Elsa in her eminence of bridal and ducal glory. "What does the woman mean?" ask the people of one another, and step between Elsa and her. "What is this?" cries Elsa, painfully startled; "What sudden change has taken place in you?"
There is a master-touch when Ortrud calls softly, "Elsa": by one stroke, an abrupt strange chord, the whole atmosphere is for the moment altered: the dreariness of the call is unforgetable. There are many hints of Ortrud's purpose given out more and more plainly till the climax is reached in her invocation to Wotan, chief of the malignant divinities. One or two other points may be noted.
As she is led in, stricken down and miserable, the warning theme is heard; then that winding, insidious theme associated with Ortrud; and last, four bars of the music heard in the first act when she stands helpless before the king and has nothing wherewith to answer her accusers: she is as miserable now as she was then, and the cause of it Lohengrin's edict and her defiance of it under Ortrud's influence.
The second scene is an exquisite picture of the mutual outpouring of love, at first full of beauty and tenderness, but gradually darkening as Ortrud's insinuations produce their effect in Elsa's mind. Tenderly Lohengrin appeals to her, but in vain; and at last the motive of warning is heard. The fatal questions are asked, the tragedy of Telramund follows, and all is over.
In the second act occur the bridal ceremonies, prior to which, moved by Ortrud's entreaties, Elsa promises to obtain a reprieve for Telramund from the sentence which has been pronounced against him. At the same time Ortrud takes advantage of her success to instil doubts into Elsa's mind as to her future happiness and the faithfulness of Lohengrin.
Let me convert you to the faith that there exists a happiness without leaven of regret!" This warm young generous sweetness which makes Elsa open to any appeal, blind to grossest fraud, merely exasperates Ortrud's ill-will. She reads in it plain pride of superiority. As she could not admit in the Knight of the swan a god-sent hero, she cannot see in Elsa an uncommonly good-hearted girl.
There is, of course, no "significance" in the sense in which the word is used by the Wagnerians. The short duet following contains a divine melody, but Ortrud's "aside" is a fairly lengthy one forty bars and is a bit of conventionalism which Wagner soon discarded.
Even as he speaks the swan appears once more, drawing the boat which is to bear him away. Lohengrin bids a last farewell to the weeping Elsa, and turns once more to the river. Now is the moment of Ortrud's triumph. She rushes forward and proclaims that the swan is none other than Godfrey, Elsa's brother, imprisoned in this shape by her magic arts.
That sinister atmosphere of mystery is never lost; the gloom and the wretched crouching figures, the fierce anger and Ortrud's alternate cajoling and threatening may be said, without exaggeration, to sound from the orchestra with as powerful an effect on the imagination as the sights and sounds on the stage.
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