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Elsa von Brabant is a figure from the Middle High German Swan knight legend from the late 13th century. She is a marginal figure in Wolfram von Eschenbach's epic Parzival . She gained new fame as the main female protagonist in Richard Wagner's opera Lohengrin.
Elsa von Brabant is the only daughter of Duke Gottfried von Brabant. Shortly before he dies, he lets his vassal, Count Friedrich von Telramund, swear allegiance to his daughter Elsa for the future. After Gottfried's death, Elsa officially becomes confirmed as duchess. At Elsa's inauguration ceremony, Telramund staged a public scandal by not swearing vassal loyalty as promised, but claiming that the deceased Gottfried had made him husband of Elsa and thus the new Count of Brabant. Although Elsa contradicts him, he sticks to his version. Since there is now testimony against testimony, the emperor is called as an arbitrator, who is supposed to solve the problem with a verdict.
On the day of judgment appointed by the emperor, Elsa and Telramund accuse each other of lying. The emperor does not want to decide and asks the two to accept what is known as a divine judgment, which in this case consists of a duel. Since Talramund is an experienced knight, but as a woman Elsa is not trained in the knightly arts, the fight seems to have already been decided.
But then a boat appears with a knight in full armor that is being pulled by a swan. The knight offers to fight in place of Elsa if she promises never to ask for his name. He introduces himself to the emperor as Lohengrin. The emperor and Elsa accept his conditions in front of an audience. Telramund is defeated in a duel and expelled from the country. Elsa and Lohengrin marry with the emperor's blessing, Lohengrin receives the title of Count of Brabant and becomes a vassal of the emperor. After a few years there is a festival at which the emperor is also present. An old acquaintance of Telramund arouses in Elsa doubts about Lohengrin's integrity and suspects him of a connection with the devil.
Elsa is now plagued by doubts and begins to torment Lohengrin with questions about his origins. Eventually he gives in and publicly declares that he is a Knight Templar, a son of Parzival, the keeper of the Holy Grail. His job is to help rulers in distress, in the case of Elsa as the rightful Duchess of Brabant. When Elsa questions about his origin, he entrusts his two children to the care of the emperor, gets into his boat, and drives away.
Richard Wagner turned the Lohengrin material into an opera and wrote the libretto himself. The premiere took place in 1850 at the Deutsches Theater in Weimar under the direction of Franz Liszt. The role of Elsa was occupied by the 23-year-old Rosa Aghte. The role of Elsa is one of the largest and most demanding for soprano in the opera literature. After Rosa Agthe, she was embodied by Maria Müller, Lotte Lehmann, Elisabeth Grümmer, Gundula Janowitz, and Leonie Rysanek, among others.
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Lohengrin, WWV 75, is a Romantic opera in three acts composed and written by Richard Wagner, first performed in 1850. The story of the eponymous character is taken from medieval German romance, notably the Parzival of Wolfram von Eschenbach, and its sequel Lohengrin, itself inspired by the epic of Garin le Loherain. It is part of the Knight of the Swan legend.
Wolfram von Eschenbach was a German knight, poet and composer, regarded as one of the greatest epic poets of medieval German literature. As a Minnesinger, he also wrote lyric poetry.
Percival, alternatively called Peredur, is a figure in the legend of King Arthur, often appearing as one of the Knights of the Round Table. First mentioned by the French author Chrétien de Troyes in the tale Perceval, the Story of the Grail, he is best known for being the original hero in the quest for the Grail, before being replaced in later literature by Galahad.
Parzival is a medieval chivalric romance by the poet and knight Wolfram von Eschenbach in Middle High German. The poem, commonly dated to the first quarter of the 13th century, centers on the Arthurian hero Parzival and his long quest for the Holy Grail following his initial failure to achieve it.
The story of the Knight of the Swan, or Swan Knight, is a medieval tale about a mysterious rescuer who comes in a swan-drawn boat to defend a damsel, his only condition being that he must never be asked his name.
Lohengrin is a character in German Arthurian literature. The son of Parzival (Percival), he is a knight of the Holy Grail sent in a boat pulled by swans to rescue a maiden who can never ask his identity. His story, which first appears in Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival, is a version of the Knight of the Swan legend known from a variety of medieval sources. Wolfram's story was expanded in two later romances. Richard Wagner's opera Lohengrin of 1848 is based upon the legend.
Kyot the Provençal is claimed by Wolfram von Eschenbach to have been a Provençal poet who supplied him with the source for his Arthurian romance Parzival. Wolfram may have been referring to the northern French poet Guiot de Provins, but this identification has proven unsatisfactory. The consensus of the vast majority of scholars today is that Kyot was an invention by Wolfram, and that Wolfram's true sources were Chrétien de Troyes' Perceval, the Story of the Grail and his own abundant creativity.
Charles Frederick was the reigning Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach.
In Arthurian legend, Gringolet is Sir Gawain's powerful war horse.
Der Pleier is the pen name of a 13th-century German poet whose real name is unknown. Three of his works survive, all Middle High German romances on Arthurian subjects: Garel, Tandareis und Flordibel, and Meleranz. Little else is known of him, but he was an important figure in the revival of Arthurian literature in Germany in the mid-13th century, after decades of declining interest in the subject.
Titurel is a fragmentary Middle High German romance written by Wolfram von Eschenbach after 1217. The fragments which survive indicate that the story would have served as a prequel to Wolfram's earlier work, Parzival, expanding on the stories of characters from that work and on the theme of the Holy Grail. Titurel was continued by a later poet named Albrecht, who tied the story together in a work generally known as Jüngere Titurel.
Hans Feodor von Milde was an Austrian operatic baritone and the husband of the soprano Rosa von Milde. He sang for almost four decades at the court opera in Weimar where he particularly excelled in the works of Richard Wagner. For many years, Milde sang under the direction of Franz Liszt, notably creating the role of Telramund in the world premiere of Richard Wagner's Lohengrin under his baton. He sang in several other notable premieres, including singing the role of the High Priest in the first stage performance of Camille Saint-Saëns's Samson et Dalila in 1877.
Karl Beck was an Austrian operatic tenor who is notable for creating the title role in Richard Wagner's opera Lohengrin in Weimar, Germany in 1850. He also sang the title role in Hector Berlioz's opera Benvenuto Cellini in its first performance outside France, also in Weimar, in 1852. Both performances were marred by a deterioration in his vocal powers probably caused by a lingering infection. He ended his career as master baker to the Imperial Court in Vienna.
Julius Huehn was an operatic bass-baritone. He sang in over 200 performances with the Metropolitan Opera between 1935 and 1946.
Eike Wilm Schulte is a German operatic baritone. A member of the Hessisches Staatstheater Wiesbaden, from 1988 the Bayerische Staatsoper, he made an international career, singing more than 100 parts at major opera houses such as the Metropolitan Opera, and at festivals including the Bayreuth Festival. He participated in several premieres of contemporary opera.
Willehalm is an unfinished Middle High German poem from the early 13th century, written by the poet Wolfram von Eschenbach. In terms of genre, the poem is "a unique fusion of the courtly and the heroic, with elements of the saintly legend attaching to it."
The Schwanenburg Castle, in North Rhine-Westphalia, where the Dukes of Cleves resided, was founded on a steep hill. It is located at the northern terminus of the Kermisdahl where it joins with the Spoykanal, which was previously an important transportation link to the Rhine.
Hanns-Herbert Schulz, better known as Hanns Petersen, was a German opera singer (baritone), music college teacher and pop singer. He is known for his career in popular music (Schlager), his many operatic performances at the Semperoper and the Deutsches Nationaltheater Weimar and his work as a professor at the Hochschule für Musik Carl Maria von Weber and Hochschule für Musik Franz Liszt, Weimar.
In the Middle High German (MHG) period (1050–1350) the courtly romance, written in rhyming couplets, was the dominant narrative genre in the literature of the noble courts, and the romances of Hartmann von Aue, Gottfried von Strassburg and Wolfram von Eschenbach, written c. 1185 – c. 1210, are recognized as classics.
Rosa von Milde, also Rosalie von Milde, néeRosa Agthe was a German operatic soprano and voice teacher. She was a leading singer at the Weimar Court Theatre from 1848 to 1867, which flourished when Franz Liszt directed it. She created, among others, the roles of Elsa in Wagner's Lohengrin, conducted by Liszt in 1850, and Margiana in Der Barbier von Bagdad by Peter Cornelius in 1858.
