but you write such eccentric stuff it is hardly possible to sing
it.' The public in general, accustomed to light operas with happy
endings, was dismayed at the sad and tragical termination, and,
while some of the best musical authorities of the day applauded,
others criticised the work unsparingly. Schumann alone seems
to have realised the force of the author's new style, for he
wrote, 'On the whole, Wagner may become of great importance and
significance to the stage,'--a doubtful prediction which was
only triumphantly verified many years afterward. Like many of
the mediæval legends, the story of Tannhäuser is connected with
the ancient Teutonic religion, which declared that Holda, the
Northern Venus, had set up her enchanted abode in the hollow
mountain known as the Hörselberg, where she entertained her
devotees with all the pleasures of love. When the missionaries
came preaching Christianity, they diligently taught the people
that all these heathen divinities were demons, and although
Holda and her court were not forgotten, she became a type of
sensual love. Tannhäuser, a minstrel of note, who has won many
prizes for his songs, hearing of the wondrous underground palace
and of its manifold charm, voluntarily enters the mountain, and
abandons himself to the fair goddess's wiles. Here he spends
a whole year in her company, surrounded by her train of loves
and nymphs, yielding to all her enchantments, which at first
intoxicate his poetic and beauty loving soul.

But at last the sensual pleasures in which he has been steeped
begin to pall upon his jaded senses. He longs to tear himself
away from the enchantress, and to return to the mingled pleasure
and pain of earth.