Tannhaeuser, a knight and celebrated minstrel, led away by an exaggeration of healthy human desires, has left his friends and gone to live with Venus in the Hoerselberg.  He soon tires of her; she tries to keep him; he calls on the Virgin; the hallucinatory dream is shattered, and he is in the free open spring air.  A shepherd boy plays on his pipe and chants a song to spring; a procession of old pilgrims to Rome passes; Tannhaeuser, feeling his exaggeration of passions, sane enough in themselves, to be a sin, praises the Almighty for his deliverance from what seems now to him like an evil dream.  Hunters’ horns are presently heard from all sides; enter Tannhaeuser’s former friends, Walther, Wolfram, Biterolf with the rest; they try to persuade him to return to his former life with them, but in vain, until Wolfram tells him that by his singing he had won the heart of the Landgrave’s daughter Elisabeth, and she has pined ever since at his unaccountable disappearance.  Tannhaeuser, at first incredulous, in the end joyfully agrees to go back to the Wartburg, where the Landgrave’s castle can be seen, and the merry clatter of hunting horns is heard on all sides as the curtain falls.  It will be seen that there is no vestige of the old stage trickery of the Dutchman here:  all seems natural because all is inevitable; of songs and concerted pieces we get plenty, but they grow spontaneously out of the drama:  the drama is not twisted and delayed for the sake of getting them in.

In the second act Elisabeth has heard of her knight’s return; she enters the hall of song and pours forth her feelings of thankfulness; Tannhaeuser comes in and begs to be favoured; there is a long love-duet; and then preparations are made for a musical tournament.  The popular march is played; the hall becomes crowded; the Landgrave makes a speech—­satisfying to German audiences, no doubt, because it praises German valour and music—­and in announcing the subject on which the minstrels shall enlarge, he hints that perhaps Tannhaeuser in his contribution will let them know in what mysterious lands he has sojourned during his long absence.  The theme is, What is love, and how do we recognize it?  The prize will be given by the Princess, and it shall be anything the successful singer chooses—­that is, it shall be the Princess.  Wolfram stands up first and praises a mild platonic attachment as being true love, and his sentiments win much applause.  Tannhaeuser sings passionately of the joys of burning fleshly desire, though as yet his language is a little veiled.  The audience, who are the judges, make no sign; Elisabeth alone shows that in her heart she goes with Tannhaeuser and not with Wolfram.  Walther, in turn, tells Tannhaeuser that he knows nothing of sincere love; Tannhaeuser grows angry, and scoffingly tells him that if he wants cold perfection he had better worship the stars; but he, Tannhaeuser, wants warm, living flesh and blood and healthy desires in