Act One

The opera opens in a meadow beside the Scheldt River, near Antwerp. Heinrich (King Henry the Fowler) has arrived to call the Brabantines to help him defend Germany against the invading Hungarians. A Herald summons the Brabantines, but one noble, Friedrich von Telramund, accuses Elsa of murdering her brother, Gottfried, the heir to the dukedom of Brabant. He claims the succession for himself.

Elsa does not defend herself, but reports a vision of a knightly champion who will defend her. The king and the others are moved, but Telramund demands combat. The Heralds twice trumpet a call for someone to defend Elsa's claim, but nobody appears. Elsa kneels in prayer, and Lohengrin appears, in a boat drawn by a swan. He offers himself as Elsa's champion, but makes her promise that she will never ask his name or origin. They pledge themselves to each other. Lohengrin defeats Telramund, but spares his life. Telramund's wife, Ortrud, is a pagan witch, who has used sorcery to protect Telramund. She wonders about the stranger who can overcome her powers. Telramund, humiliated, falls at her feet.



Act Two

At the Fortress at Antwerp. Telramund reproaches Ortrud for his disgrace. She tells him that Lohengrin would lose his power if Elsa were to ask his name and origin. Ortrud calls to Elsa on the balcony and falsely appeals to her generosity. Ortrud calls upon her gods and ingratiates herself with Elsa, but also plants in her mind doubts and suspicions about Lohengrin.

The Herald announces that Telramund is banished, and that the stranger will wed Elsa today and assume the title of Protector, not Gottfried's title of Duke. Tomorrow he will lead them into battle. The wedding procession is interrupted first by Telramund, who accuses Lohengrin of sorcery. He demands that Lohengrin reveal his name and Lohengrin refuses. Only Elsa can command him, he says. Whe he looks at Elsa, however, he can see she is troubled. As they reach top step of cathedral, Elsa fearfully sees Ortrud making a threatening gesture.



Act Three

In Elsa's bridal chamber, Elsa pleads with Lohengrin to reveal himself to her. He refuses, first with reassurances of love, and then with warnings. Telramund bursts into the bridal chamber with his henchmen. Lohengrin slays Telramund, and orders the body brought before Heinrich. He declares that he will reveal all there.

Back on the bank of the Scheldt, Telramund's covered body is brought before Heinrich. Elsa and Lohengrin enter. Lohengrin announces he can no longer lead the army into battle. He killed Telramund in self-defense, and Elsa has broken her vow. He reveals himself as son of Parsifal and Knight of the Holy Grail. Now he must return to Monsalvat. The swan reappears with boat. Lohengrin tells Elsa if they had lived together a year without her questioning him, her brother would have been returned to her. He gives her his sword, ring and horn, to keep for Gottfried should he return. Ortrud reveals that she herself bewitched Gottfried, and that Gottfried is actually the swan drawing Lohengrin's boat. Now, she taunts, he can never be restored. Lohengrin kneels to pray, and a dove descends, hovering over the boat. The swan vanishes, and in his place appears Gottfried. Lohengrin proclaims him Duke of Brabant, and vanishes. Elsa falls lifeless to the ground.

© All Music Guide

Act 1 - 1.Vorspiel (Prelude)

In 1853, Richard Wagner wrote an "explanatory Program" for the overture to his sixth opera, Lohengrin, which he had completed in 1848. In his program, Wagner describes a vision of the Holy Grail, guided from out the heavenly mists by a host of angels. The Grail is the symbol of the all-embracing love of the Savior, who offers those priviledged to see it eternal redemption from the evil-corrupted world.

Indeed, armed with this authorial interpretation of the overture, it is not difficult to recognize images of sanctity and eternity in Wagner's music. The orchestration of the overture's opening, featuring divisi violins, playing at ethereal heights of the register and colored by chords in the flutes and oboes, swaddles the main thematic idea in a gossamer web of shimmering sound. The theme unfolds over the course of the overture as though in a single extended breath, each potential cadence point diverted into continuation or reiteration of the theme, filling the timeless expanse of eternity. The orchestration gradually increases in weight of instrumental forces and fills out the bottom of the register leading to the overture's triumphant climax, and then gradually returns to the glistening violins to bring the overture to an end: perhaps a musical manifestation of the revelation of the grail to the earthly select and its immediate retreat to the heavenly realm.

Fulfilling the traditional function of an opera overture, the overture to Lohengrin introduces some of the opera's most important musical material, and begins the task of plotting associations between the music and the characters and ideas. More specifically, throughout the opera the overture theme is consistently associated with the opera's two most pious characters—the Grail knight Lohengrin and Elsa (in some of her moments of deepest faith)—and the redemptive power of the Grail itself. The single theme of the Lohengrin prelude is recognized in Act I scene 2 when Elsa, accused of murdering her brother in order to secure her succession to the throne of Brabant, makes her first appearance, before her judge, King Heinrich. The woodwinds quote sections of the overture's theme, and essentially speak for Elsa, accompanying her non-verbal responses to the King's questions. The theme, complete with its orchestration for high violins as at the overture's opening, returns immediately before Elsa sings of the knight who approaches to redeem her from the charge that Friedrich has brought against her. The association of this theme with the saintly Lohengrin himself is made yet more explicit when it returns later in Act II scene 2, as the music for Lohengrin's first monologue, after his arrival in a boat drawn upon the river by a swan. In the fourth scene of Act II, brief allusions are made to the overture's theme in the instrumental music that accompanies the action of the procession of ladies advancing toward the cathedral for Elsa's wedding to Lohengrin. In Act Two's final scene, a portion of the overture theme is cited as the chorus of men and noble men and women sing "Hail to thee, Elsa of Brabant!" The climactic usage of the overture theme occurs in Act III, scene 3, in which, through the so-called Grail narration, Lohengrin reveals his lineage as son of Parsifal, the priviledged one who guards the mystical Holy Grail, and as Lohengrin frees the boat-drawing swan-which transforms itself into Elsa's long-lost brother—from the fetters that bind it into servitude.

© Jennifer Hambrick, Rovi