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Updated: June 26, 2025
The old comte seems never to have suspected. When Liszt eventually, like Tannhäuser, mutineered against the charms of the Venusberg and returned to Paris, he wrote many letters to the comtesse, in which, as he himself said, he gained his "first practice in the lofty French style." But this intrigue was followed by his appearance in the procession of George Sand's lovers.
As for me, I do not suppose you imagine that, like the Knight Tannhauser on the Venusberg, I am continually wasting my spirit and my strength over what Heine calls "the sweets and dainties of love;" or that the philtres of Circe have transformed me into a hog like the companions of Ulysses. Go gently, my dear fellow! I am a representative of the learned cohort, please to remember!
The plot was taken from an old German tradition, which centres about the castle where the landgraves of the thirteenth century instituted peaceful contests between the Minnesingers and knightly poets. Near this castle towers the Venusberg, a dreary elevation, which, according to popular tradition, was inhabited by Holda, the goddess of Spring.
Her thoughts would have been of the wicked world from which he had escaped more than of the paradise in which he had found shelter. She was no holy Elisabeth, to welcome Tannhäuser back from the Venusberg. That he should have been in the Venusberg at all could be only a degree less torturing to her than to know he was there still.
For a while, like a Knight in the Venusberg, he gave himself up to the delight of her. Then suddenly he pulled himself together, and, putting down his teacup, he said what he had come to say: "This is the last time that I shall ever see you." She started. "What on earth do you mean? Are you going off to the other end of the world?" "I'm going back to France." "When?" "To-morrow morning."
I had had a piano put in my room at the Eiche, and though I smashed all its strings, nothing satisfactory would emerge. With much pain and toil I sketched the first outlines of my music for the Venusberg, as fortunately I already had its theme in my mind. Meanwhile I was very much troubled by excitability and rushes of blood to the brain.
"Then Tannhauser, full of despair and with his soul darkened, went away, and returned to the only asylum open to him, the Venusberg. But lo! three days after he had gone, Pope Urban discovered that his pastoral staff had put forth buds and had burst into flower.
As his spirit passes away his pilgrim's staff miraculously bursts out into leaf and blossom, showing that his sins have been forgiven. The overture to the opera is well known by its frequent performances as a concert number. It begins with the pilgrim's song, which, as it dies away, is succeeded by the seductive spells of the Venusberg and the voices of the sirens calling to Tannhäuser.
The music was unfamiliar. But the rendering was realistic, and with a contemporary unfamiliarity. Tannhauser did not go to a Venusberg, but to a Pleasure City. What was a Pleasure City? A dream, surely, the fancy of a fantastic, voluptuous writer. He became interested, curious. The story developed with a flavour of strangely twisted sentimentality. Suddenly he did not like it.
For "Tannhauser" I have still to score the grand new scene for Venus, and to compose the whole of the Venusberg dance music. How this is to get done in time without a miracle I fail to perceive. I wish YOU would at last come to Paris. But no more of this. I cannot speak of anything at greater length, firstly, because I know too little, and secondly, because I must absolutely conclude these lines.
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