she took refuge in its caverns, where she was afterwards confounded with the Grecian Venus.  Her court was filled with nymphs and sirens, who enticed those whose impure desires led them to its vicinity, and lured them into the caverns, from which they were supposed never to return.  The first act opens in this court, and reveals Tannhaeuser, the knight and minstrel, under the sway of Venus.  In spite of her fascinations he succeeds in tearing himself away, and we next find him at the castle of Wartburg, the home of Hermann the Landgrave, whose daughter Elizabeth is in love with him.  At the minstrel contest he enters into the lists with the other Minnesingers, and, impelled by a reckless audacity and the subtle influence of Venus, sings of the attractions of sensual pleasures.  Walter, of the Vogelweide, replies with a song to virtue.  Tannhaeuser breaks out in renewed sensual strains, and a quarrel ensues.  The knights rush upon him with their swords, but Elizabeth interposes and saves his life.  He expresses his penitence, makes a pilgrimage to Rome and confesses to the Pope, who replies that, having tasted the pleasures of hell, he is forever damned, and, raising his crosier, adds:  “Even as this wood cannot blossom again, so there is no pardon for thee.”  Elizabeth prays for him in her solitude, but her prayers apparently are of no avail.  At last he returns dejected and hopeless, and in his wanderings meets Wolfram, another minstrel, also in love with Elizabeth, to whom he tells the sad story of his pilgrimage.  He determines to return to the Venusberg.  He hears the voices of the sirens luring him back.  Wolfram seeks to detain him, but is powerless until he mentions the name of Elizabeth, when the sirens vanish and their spells lose their attraction.  A funeral procession approaches in the distance, and on the bier is the form of the saintly Elizabeth.  He sinks down upon the coffin and dies.  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 Tannhaeuser.  As the whirring sounds grow fainter and fainter, the pilgrim’s song is again heard gradually approaching, and at last closing the overture in a joyous burst of harmony.  The first act opens with the scene in the Venusberg, accompanied by the Bacchanale music, which was written in Paris by Wagner after the opera was finished and had been performed.  It is now known as “the Parisian Bacchanale.”  It is followed by a voluptuous scene between Tannhaeuser and Venus, a long dialogue, during which the hero, seizing his harp, trolls out a song ("Doch sterblich, ach!"), the theme of which has already been given out by the overture, expressing his weariness of her