Lohengrin

About the work King Henry I, “the Fowler”, is in Brabant to hold the Assizes and assert the nobles’ duty to provide militias to assist in military campaigns. Since the death of the Duke of Brabant, however, the succession has been a source of conflict. His children, Gottfried and Elsa, are wards of Count Telramund, but Gottfried has vanished and Telramund suspects Elsa of having killed him. A duel between her accuser and Elsa’s champion is organised to decide the issue. At the last moment a knight appears in a boat drawn by a swan, ready to defend Elsa’s honour. He is also prepared to take her as his wife on condition that she never ask him his name or where he hails from. Elsa agrees and the knight defeats Telramund. It was Ortrud, wife of Telramund and daughter of Radbod, the last Frisian prince, who poisoned her husband’s opinion of Elsa, with a view to regaining the position she had once held. Now she sets about blocking Elsa’s marriage to the stranger and sowing mistrust in her mind. But Elsa remains steadfast and refuses to ask her husband-to-be where he comes from. But once in their bridal chamber, she regrets that she doesn’t know his identity and expresses her desire to be able to speak his name. Swearing to keep his secret, she asks the forbidden question. Telramund bursts into the room with his noblemen and is promptly killed by the knight, who then formally reproaches Elsa for breaking her oath. He announces that he is Lohengrin, a knight of the Holy Grail and son of Parsifal, and now has to leave, since his secret has been revealed. Ortrud is convinced that she has got what she wanted, but then Gottfried, Elsa’s absent brother, turns up, having been kidnapped by Ortrud and turned into …a swan. Lohengrin appoints Gottfried as heir to the throne and the swan bears Lohengrin away again. Elsa dies of a broken heart. For a considerable period LOHENGRIN remained Wagner’s best received opera worldwide. That the opera has been the subject of so many different ...