e _leit-motif_--than a
passage like the Venus music in _Tannhaeuser_. Just as Senta's ballad of
the Flying Dutchman is the germ of that opera, so this is the germ of
_Lohengrin_. It is worked out at great length when Lohengrin's narrative
arrives, and he declares his name, parentage, and country. The Swan or
River theme can scarcely be called a _leit-motif_ in the elementary
meaning of the phrase. For a fair example of this we must go to the
passage used by Lohengrin when he warns Elsa that she must ask no
questions:

[Illustration: Some bars of music]

This is never developed at all. It recurs only when Elsa's pertinacious
inquisitiveness threatens to rupture their somewhat hastily arranged
alliance. Then it sounds out sinister, menacing, and the effect, both
dramatic and musical, is overwhelming. Another example is the phrase
representing Lohengrin simply as a heroic knight. Save in the finale of
the first act, no great use is made of it.

It is unnecessary for me to describe in further detail an opera which is
so well known, and can be followed at a first hearing very much more
easily than _Tannhaeuser_. While there is a great deal of recitative,
there are also many numbers merely joined together in the _Tannhaeuser_
manner. Such numbers as the Prayer and Finale of the first act, Elsa's
Song and the Processional March in the second, the Wedding Chorus in the
last, are simply placed there; they do not grow out of themes, as they
would have grown had the opera been written when Wagner was ten years
older. The love duet which takes place after the marriage is a series of
his most generously inspired melodies. There are enough beautiful and
passionate tunes there to make the fortune of half a dozen Italian
operas.

After _Lohengrin_ the composer wrote nothing more for some years, though
we may be sure he was eternally planning. He was intensely interested in
politics. Revolution was in the air, and Wagner had to have his say on
that as on every other topic. He made speeches and published pamphlets;
and just as his musical schemes seemed wild to such contemporaries as
the late Charles Halle, so his ideas of social regeneration must have
seemed Utopian to the point of sheer lunacy to the very comrades with
whom he was acting. The explosion came; barricades were thrown up in the
Dresden streets, and Wagner sought to bring about a quiet ending to the
crisis by appealing to the Imperial soldiers to join with, and not to