Cast.
| Lohengrin | Theodore Habelmann. |
| Telramund | Herr Vierling. |
| King Henry | Herr Franosch. |
| Herald | W. Formes. |
| Ortrud | Mme. Frederici. |
| Elsa | Mme. Louise Lichtmay. |
First performance in Italian, Academy of Music, March 23, 1874.
Cast.
| Lohengrin | Italo Campanini. |
| Telramund | Giuseppe del Puente. |
| King Henry | Giovanni Nannetti. |
| Herald | A. Blum. |
| Ortrud | Annie Louise Cary. |
| Elsa | Christine Nilsson. |
LOHENGRIN
I.—The Book
When he was collecting the materials for "Tannhäuser," Wagner, as we have seen, read the "Parzival" of Wolfram von Eschenbach. The last one hundred lines of that poem contains one of the versions of the story of Lohengrin. It is an insufficient story, however, and would not in itself have provided the foundation of Wagner's most popular work. As I have said in my introduction to the Schirmer edition of the vocal score of "Lohengrin," "Wagner's method of literary composition was to gather all the versions of a national mythological legend, and select the incidents and characters which fitted into his plan." This plan, of course, grows out of his perception of the dramatic possibilities of the story. The sources of Wagner's poem, then, in addition to "Parzival," were "Der Jüngere Titurel," a poem by Albrecht von Scharffenberg, giving a full account of the Holy Grail and its guardians, and also recounting the life and death of Lohengrin after leaving Brabant; Der Schwanen-Ritter, by Konrad von Würzburg, a poem dating from the latter half of the thirteenth century; "Lohengrin," a poem by an unknown Bavarian poet, and the popular form of the legend as given by the Grimm Brothers in the "Deutsche Sagen."