There is a legend which tells that when the gods and goddesses fled from their palace on Olympus before the advance of Christianity, Venus betook herself to the North, and established her court in the bowels of the earth, beneath the hill of Hoerselberg in Thuringia.  There we find the minstrel Tannhaeuser at the opening of the opera.  He has left the world above, its strifes and its duties, for the wicked delights of the grotto of Venus.  There he lies in the embraces of the siren goddess, while life passes in a ceaseless orgy of sinful pleasure.  But the poet wearies of his amorous captivity, and would fain return to the earth once more.  In vain the goddess pleads, in vain she calls up new scenes of ravishing delight, he still prays to be gone.  Finally he calls on the sainted name of Mary, and Venus with her nymphs, grotto, palace and all, sink into the earth with a thunder-clap, while Tannhaeuser, when he comes to his senses once more, finds himself kneeling upon the green grass on the slope of a sequestered valley, lulled by the tinkling bells of the flock and the piping of a shepherd from a rock hard by.  The pious chant of pilgrims, passing on their way to Rome, wakens his slumbering conscience, and bids him expiate his guilt by a life of abstinence and humiliation.  His meditations are interrupted by the appearance of the Landgrave of Thuringia, his liege lord, who is hunting with Wolfram von Eschinbach, Walther von der Vogelweide, and other minstrel-knights of the Wartburg; but his newly awakened sense of remorse forbids him to return with them to the castle, until Wolfram breathes the name of the Landgrave’s niece Elisabeth, the saintly maiden who has drooped and pined since Tannhaeuser disappeared from the singing contests at the Wartburg.  The thought of human love touches his heart with warm sympathy, and he gladly hastens to the castle with his newly found friends.

In the second act we are at the Wartburg, in the Hall of Song in which those tournaments of minstrelsy were held, for which the castle was celebrated in the middle ages.  Elisabeth enters, bringing a greeting to the hall, whose threshold she has not crossed since Tannhaeuser’s mysterious departure.  Her joyous tones have scarcely ceased when Tannhaeuser, led by Wolfram, appears and falls at the feet of the youthful Princess.  Her pure spirit cannot conceive aught of dishonour in his absence, and she welcomes him back to her heart with girlish trust.  Now the guests assemble and, marshalled in order, take their places for the singers’ tourney.  The Landgrave announces the subject of the contest—­the power Of love—­and more than hints that the hand of Elisabeth is to be the victor’s prize.  The singers in turn take their harps and pour forth their improvisations; Wolfram sings of the chaste ideal which he worships from afar, Walther of the pure fount of virtue from which he draws his inspiration, and the warrior Biterolf praises the chivalrous passion of the soldier.