In the Wartburg Tannhauser meets the maiden whose heart he has won just after she has apostrophized the walls which had echoed his voice; and from him she learns the meaning of the strange emotion which fills her in his presence.  Again minstrels gather before a company of great nobles for a contest in the Hall of Song.  Love is to be the theme, and the hand of Elizabeth the reward of the victor.  Spiritual love is hymned by Tannhauser’s companions.  Wolfram von Eschenbach likens it to a pure fountain from which only high and sacred feelings can flow.  Tannhauser questions the right of those who have not experienced the passion as he has felt it to define the nature of love.  Goaded by the taunts and threats of rude Biterolf, he bursts forth in a praise of Venus.  The assembly is in commotion.  Swords are drawn.  Sacrilege must be punished.  Death confronts the impiously daring minstrel.  But Elizabeth, whose heart has been mortally pierced by his words, interposes to save him.  She has been stricken, but what is that to his danger of everlasting damnation?  Would they rob his soul of its eternal welfare?  The knight, indifferent to a score of swords, is crushed by such unselfish devotion, and humbly accepts the Landgrave’s clemency, which spares his life that he may join a younger band of pilgrims and seek absolution at Rome.  He goes to the Holy City, mortifying his flesh at every step, and humbles himself in self-abasement and accusation before the Pope; but only to hear from the hard lips of the Keeper of the Keys that for such sin as his there is as little hope of deliverance as for the rebudding of the papal staff.

The elder pilgrims return in the fall of the year, and Elizabeth eagerly seeks among them for the face of the knight whose soul and body she had tried to save.  He is not among them.  Gently she puts aside the proffered help of Wolfram, whose unselfish love is ever with her, climbs the hill to the castle, and dies.  Famished and footsore, Tannhauser staggers after the band of pilgrims who have returned to their homes with sins forgiven.  His greeting of Wolfram is harsh, but the good minstrel’s sympathy constrains him to tell the story of his vain pilgrimage.  Salvation forfeited, naught is left for him but to seek surcease of suffering in the arms of Venus.  Again he sees her grotto streaming with roseate light and hears her alluring voice.  He rushes forward toward the scene of enchantment, but Wolfram utters again the name of her who is now pleading for him before the judgment seat, of God Himself; and he reels back.  A funeral cortege descends from the castle.  With an agonized cry:  “Holy Elizabeth, pray for me!” Tannhauser sinks lifeless beside the bier just as the band of younger pilgrims comes from Rome bearing the crozier of the Pope clothed in fresh verdure.  They hymn the miracle of redemption.

* * *

Wagner has himself told us what fancies he is willing shall flit through the minds of listeners to the overture to his opera.  It was performed at a concert under his direction while he was a political refugee at Zurich, and for the programme of the concert he wrote a synopsis of its musical and poetical contents which I shall give here in the translation made by William Ashton Ellis, but with the beginnings of the themes which are referred to reproduced in musical notes:—­