1. 190
2. 1 The catalysts here were W. E. B. Dubois and Charlie Chaplin, both discussed below; see my Musical Meaning: Toward a Critical History (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2002), pp. 255-56.
3. This introduction encompasses and reveals the mystic element always present and always hidden in the piece [i.e., the opera], the divine secret, the supernatural force, the supreme law of the characters' destiny and of the chain of events we are about to contemplate. To teach us the unrepresentable [inenarrable, literally un-narratable] power of this secret, Wagner first shows us the ineffable beauty of the sanctuary, inhabited by a God who avenges the oppressed [venge les opprimes] and asks nothing but love and faith from His worshipers [ses fideles]. He [Wagner] initiates us into the Holy Grail: he causes to shimmer before our eyes the temple of incorruptible woods, with fragrant walls, doors of gold [etc].2
4. 2"'Lohengrin' et 'Tannhauser' de Richard Wagner" (1851), in Franz Liszt, Artiste et Societe (hereafter AS), ed. Remy Stricker (Paris: Harmoniques, Flammarion, 1995), p. 290 (my trans.).
5. 3 This idea presumably stems from the third-act narrative "In fernem Land," in which Lohengrin reveals his name and origins.