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Updated: July 13, 2025
The seeds of curiosity and distrust which Ortrud has sown in Elsa's mind have ripened, and in spite of her conviction that it will end her happiness, she questions Lohengrin with increasing vehemence, at last openly demanding to know his secret. At this juncture Telramund breaks into the apartment with four followers, intending to take the life of Lohengrin.
He dwelt with his mother Ortrud to the end of her days in a small house not far from the residence of Konar. Gunrig's mother also dwelt with them not that she had any particular regard for them personally, but in order that she might be near to the beautiful girl who had been beloved by her son. Gadarn, the great northern chief, ever afterwards paid an annual visit to Swamptown.
He raises against her his maddened hand: "Ortrud!..." "Do you threaten me? Threaten a woman?" she sneers, unmoved; "Oh, lily-livered! Had you been equally bold in threatening him who now sends us forth to our miserable doom, full easily might you have earned victory in place of shame. Ha! He who should manfully stand up to the encounter with him would find him weaker than a child!"
Ortrud speaks with impressive mystery close to her ear: "Could you but comprehend what marvellous manner of being is the man of whom I say but this: May he never forsake you through the very same magic by which he came to you!" Elsa starts away from Ortrud, in horror at such impiety, disbelief in the highest.
Ortrud listens till it has died away; then asks, with cold quiet: "What makes you waste yourself in these wild complaints?" "That the very weapon should have been taken from me with which I might have struck you dead!" he cries, stung to insanity. Scornfully calm and cold as before, "Friedrich, you Count of Telramund, for what reason," she asks, "do you distrust me?"
"Behold the Duke of Brabant! Your leader he shall be!" At sight of him, Ortrud utters a cry of terror, Elsa, drawn for a moment out of her stupor, a cry of joy.
The progress is twice interrupted; first by Ortrud, who asserts her precedence, and second by Telramund, who, in the scena "Den dort im Glanz," accuses Lohengrin of sorcery.
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.
Fehringer, who was afterwards engaged by Liszt for the role of Ortrud in the production of Lohengrin at Weimar, but by that time her powers had greatly deteriorated. Nothing could be more depressing than my connection with this opera under such dismal circumstances. And yet there were no outward signs of failure.
Didn't I sing? It was for you, Barney. My soul, my heart, my body, went all into Ortrud that night." "It was a great, a truly great thing, Iola."
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