In an NYT interview about his late-career excursion into Wagner, Beczała spoke briefly about his approach to this role: “Normally you think you can make this character more interesting by making him more human . . . But it doesn’t help. You have to be, as Lohengrin, outside of this community. You have to be almost like a god, a strange being.” Well, there’s a sorta godlike element, I suppose, but when it comes to community, all of Wagner’s male protagonists are, at least at the outset, on the outs save one—Hans Sachs, and of course he has a co-protagonist, Walther, who, like Lohengrin, is of a higher station but seeks to join the community. In Opera as Opera, I wrote at sufficient length about the historicopolitical aspects of Lohengrin, as they related to the Wilson production, to feel no need to expatiate further in regard to this one. Near the end of the book, though, in the course of sampling some of the themes and variations found in the E-19 “redundant narrative,” I returned to this opera in the light of Wagner’s own view of it as a parable of the artist. I note that in such a reading, The Grail stands in for the spiritual power of great art, a power known only to an elect few, whose sources must remain forever hidden, perhaps even from the artist himself. Once they are brought into the open, rationalized and intellectualized, their magic is gone.

In Lohengrin, this parable is decked out in mythical raiment. Wagner recognized it as pre-Christian in origin (insisted on that, in fact), but he was also aware that it had to be presented in its Christian form to be relatable to his audience and take advantage of the deep emotional associations it would hold for them. As I suggested in my earlier remarks about Ortrud, that also would make it possible for pre-Christian religious belief to take on the antagonistic function in the opera—one strong enough to really throw the balance of power into question—and tie it into the historical background of the Christianizing of Northern Europe and its analog, the unification of the German territories. It also served as deep disguise for the parable, and for the very personal meaning that had for the composer.

For though Lohengrin arrives as, yes, an outsider, and is possessed of powers that are indeed “strange,” he longs to be an insider, to acquire the one power closed off to him, that of human love. He is willing to surrender much to gain that. We don’t know exactly what would become of him if he definitively broke ranks—”mich zürnt der Gral wenn ich noch bleib,” or, “The Grail would wax wroth if I stayed longer,” does not really tell us much, and if he were to answer “So? Be wroth. I love Elsa, and I really like it here,” I don’t know where in the Grail instruction booklet we might find the prescribed punishment. But of course, he would thenceforth be mortal. No more Heavenly Dove flitting down come Eastertide. Since I believe the entire E-19 metastory, or at least a crucial component of it, is concerned with the position of the artist in a democratizing, industrializing, secularizing society, Lohengrin is not at all out of place with several dozen operas with more ordinary spiritual claims. Most of them are tragedies—the marriage that would have brought the rebellious, poetic outsider into the community is forestalled, and one or both protagonists die, accompanied by a transcendent musical atmosphere. Lohengrin is more complicated. The marriage does take place, and so far as the opera’s worldly conflict is concerned, the ending is happy: the pagan opposition is defeated, and the heir to the dukedom is restored. The opera’s last bars, with their recollection of the chorus hailing the hero’s coming, are sad, yet upbeat. Still, the opera is a tragedy on two counts: the virtuous heroine, having failed to uphold her impossible lifetime oath only to be informed that, really, it was for only a year, has died; and the genius artist, keeper of a sacred flame, has not ascended from demigodliness to full humanity. The answers to the questions “Can the artist find his place in our new world?” and, more intimately, “Is artistic genius compatible with domestic bliss?” have been answered in the negative. Lohengrin has retained his magical powers, but has not found love. Something else has happened, too. The human community has seen this failure, and has begun to suspect that it may have to get along without the gods. In that, they are very like the folk left on the banks of the Rhine at the end of Götterdämmerung.