eternal damnation of Vanderdecken.

It need hardly be said that this did not satisfy Wagner. He did not like to see people eternally damned; drab, hopeless tragedy was not for him. In nearly every opera we find peace and hope at the close, or even ecstasy in death, as in the Dusk of the Gods (Götterdämmerung) and Tristan. So he promptly made use of Elisabeth in TANNHÄUSER, though, as we shall see, the redeeming act is not so sharply defined as in the Dutchman. In the first scene Tannhäuser is sleeping in the arms of Venus, while bacchanals indulge in riotous dances. Tannhäuser suddenly starts from sleep: he has dreamed of his home as it was before his fall—of the village chime, the birds, the flowers, the sweet air; and he asks permission to return from this hot, steaming cave of vice to the fair clean earth. Venus in vain plays upon him with all her arts and wiles; he sings his magnificent song in praise of her and her beauty, but insists that he must go, and ends with a frenzied appeal to the Virgin. In a moment the illusion is broken: Venus, her luxurious cavern, her nymphs and satyrs, all disappear. There is a minute's blackness, then the light returns, and Tannhäuser is lying in the roadside before a cross. The sky is blue and the trees and grass are green, and a shepherd-boy is carolling a fresh, merry spring song. Tannhäuser remains with his face to earth while a band of pilgrims passes on its way to Rome. Then his old companions come up, recognise him, tell him Elisabeth has patiently awaited his return, and so induce him to go with them.

The second act opens on the Hall of Song. Elisabeth thinks over her grief and longing during Tannhäuser's absence, and sings her delight now that he has come back to her. He comes in, and there follows a most beautiful and touching scene, Elisabeth expressing her love and joy and recounting her past sorrow, while in Tannhäuser's utterances are mingled joy, regret, gratitude, and a sense of rapturous repose on finding himself at peace once again, after being so long tossed on seas of stormy passion. The tournament of song commences. Various minstrels sing the pure pleasures of a love in which the flesh has no part; Tannhäuser, Elisabeth approving, praises an honest, natural love. The others oppose him, until, goaded to madness, he loses all self-control. He hears the voice of Venus and calls upon her; in confusion the women rush from the hall, the men draw their swords, and in a moment the hero would be stabbed did not Elisabeth dash between him and the infuriated knights. She pleads for him, and at last, the voice of pilgrims being heard in the distance, Tannhäuser's life is spared on condition that he joins them and goes to Rome to ask forgiveness. The curtain in the last act rises on the scene of the first, but where all was young and fresh, now the leaves are withered and the tints of autumn are everywhere. Elisabeth watches the pilgrims pass on their return from Rome—Tannhäuser is not amongst them. She sings her prayer to the Virgin and goes home, as it proves, to die. Wolfram, Tannhäuser's friend, who also loves Elisabeth, sings his song of resignation; and then Tannhäuser enters, to the sinister theme of the Pope's curse. He tells Wolfram how he has been to Rome, how he has suffered, how he asked the Pope's pardon, and how the Pope declared that he should never be forgiven until the staff in his hand blossomed. So now he is on his way back to Venus. Venus calls him; he struggles with Wolfram, and is about to break away when the body of Elisabeth is carried by. Tannhäuser falls by the side of the bier; the Pope's staff, which has burgeoned, is brought on; and so the opera ends, Tannhäuser being redeemed.

It is necessary to rehearse in this way the dramatic bases of Tannhäuser and Wagner's succeeding operas for two reasons. First, the drama, which played a big enough part in the Dutchman, now becomes more important, more essential, than ever. Many an old Italian opera may be heard without the hearer knowing in the least what it is about; indeed, in many cases the less one knows of the plot, the more one enjoys the music. But the reverse is true of Wagner. Certain portions of Tannhäuser, for example, can be listened to with pleasure simply as noble or beautiful music: the overture, Tannhäuser's Song to Venus, the Pilgrims' Marching Chorus, Wolfram's "O Star of Eve," Elisabeth's Prayer, and so on. On the other hand, without an acquaintance with the story, and each stage of the story as it progresses, much of Venus's music in the first act loses its significance; the duet of Elisabeth and Tannhäuser in the second act loses its pathos, and the huge finale is meaningless, even as music; and the greater portion of the third act is simply bewildering. When we know what is being sung or done, the music is as clear as the day. Wagner knew this better than anyone, and, as I pointed out in commenting on the Dutchman, he brought his whole theatrical experience and training to help him to make the drama as simple and comprehensible as possible. When the Wagner battle was raging in the seventies and eighties, the sages pointed to the necessity of understanding the drama for the purpose of understanding the music as a defect of the Wagner music-drama, and a proof of Wagner's inferiority as a composer. But one would like to ask the sages how many songs are there which do not afford a finer artistic enjoyment when the words are understood?

A second reason for thoroughly knowing the drama of the later Wagner operas is that without that knowledge the leit-motif, which now becomes a formidable element, is likely to be wholly misunderstood and its artistic value missed. Nine-tenths of the absurdities written and talked about the leit-motif are due to ignorance of the nature of the dramatic situations in which it is used, and in consequence the purposes for which it is used. The leit-motif (leading theme) had very humble beginnings. Who was the first to employ it I really don't know. It was simply a theme which made its first appearance with one of the personages of the opera, and afterwards was used whenever that personage came on again or was referred to. Or it was connected with some thought, someone's destiny, someone's plans, and either because it expressed truly the right emotion, or because it acted by association of ideas, whenever it sounded from the orchestra the thing desired was recalled to one's mind. So used it was a useful father than a highly artistic device. Wagner constantly used it so for matters which did not demand lengthy treatment, such as Lohengrin's warning to Elsa or the curse on the gold in the Ring. But while continuing to make this elementary application of it, rather for dramatic than for musical purposes, he at the same time developed it until it ceased to be merely a leading motive, but became the very stuff of the music itself. Much of the music of the later operas is spun out of what appear at first nothing more than the old leading motives. The process by which this is done will be discussed later; for the present let us see how far Wagner goes with it in Tannhäuser.

In the Dutchman there are two principal themes, the first—

standing for Vanderdecken, the curse laid on him, and the whole idea of the phantom ship; the second—

for Senta. They are short and clean-cut; they recur when wanted, and are subjected to little modification. There is not a single theme of this description in Tannhäuser. The first act is perfectly easy to follow. There are no leit-motifs. The Venus and bacchantic music will be heard again in the second and third acts; but the rest consists of numbers almost as