of operas.  Out of the blue sky comes the Montsalvat (not necessarily the Grail) motive; it descends with ever-gathering fulness, through key after key, until at last it culminates in a tremendous climax for the brass:  then comes a wondrous cadence, falling slowly, as a mountain stream falls over slabs of smooth-worn mountain rock, until we get back to the original atmosphere.  The Montsalvat vision has faded away into the blue whence it came.  Wagner afterwards achieved some marvellous things, but none more marvellous than this.

The curtain rises:  there is a rum-tum-tum by the orchestra.  We are at once in the discord of a turbulent armed camp:  the fury of Telramund against those who are not convinced of his evidently prejudiced view that Elsa holds the lands he wishes to hold, is made to resound in the orchestra as not the most expert Italian composer could make it resound by the voices.  When Elsa enters to defend herself the music changes its character utterly; it is the embodiment of the sweetness of young feminine kindly nature; and it is odd that Wagner, when writing this music, which he fancied was the most German ever written, should have gone so far as, in some of its finest parts, to steal bits of the Austrian hymn, composed, as we may remember, by not even an Austrian, but a Croatian, pure Slav, composer.  Elsa’s account of her dream is not dramatic as Wagner, by the time he wrote his next work, would have understood the term—­in shape it is an Italian aria, and everything is at a standstill until it is finished—­yet it occurs fittingly, and prepares us by ethereal music for the music of a gentleman who is very unethereal.  In form the whole scene is as near as may be a regular Italian opera scene.  King Henry the Fowler and his nobles show mighty patience in sitting or standing it out to the end.  The business of a champion for Elsa being called for, the moments of suspense, the prayers of Elsa and her attendant maidens, the fiery impatience of Telramund and the premature triumph of Ortrud are all done with Wagner’s consummate skill in writing purely theatrical music; and when the swan and the hero are sighted the excitement is worked up with the same skill to a glorious triumph, and we hear the Lohengrin, “as hero,” theme in its full splendour.  Then comes the fighting music, which, like all fighting music, is mediocre stuff, and the gorgeous set piece, the finale.  This last is quite old-fashioned opera, but it is not forced in:  it happens inevitably.  The themes are mainly new, but the Lohengrin heroic theme is worked in triumphantly.  Technically there is no advance or change in Lohengrin:  the counterpoint and interweaving of themes of Tristan and the Mastersingers were to come a few years later.  Indeed, there is less of Wagner the contrapuntal virtuoso in Lohengrin than in Tannhaeuser.

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