Anna is flattered
by his attentions, and promises to be his wife; but she soon tires of
her gloomy lover, and ends by openly admitting her preference for the
hunter Conrad. Her resolution to break with Hans is confirmed by an
apparition of the queen of the gnomes, Hans Heiling's mother, surrounded
by her attendant sprites, who warns her under fearful penalties to
forswear the love of an immortal. Hans Heiling is furious at the perfidy
of Anna, and vows terrible vengeance upon her and Conrad, which he is
about to put into execution with the aid of his gnomes. At the last
moment, however, his mother appears, and persuades him to relinquish all
hopes of earthly love and to return with her to their subterranean home.
There is much in this strange story which suggests the legend of the
Flying Dutchman, and, bearing in mind the admiration which in his early
days Wagner felt for the works of Marschner, it is interesting to trace
in 'Hans Heiling' the source of much that is familiar to us in the score
of 'Der Fliegende Hollaender.' Of Marschner's other operas, the most
familiar are 'Templer und Juedin,' founded upon Sir Walter Scott's
'Ivanhoe,' a fine work, suffering from a confused and disconnected
libretto; and 'Der Vampyr,' a tale of unmitigated gloom and horror.
Weber and Marschner show the German romantic school at its best; for the
lesser men, such as Hoffmann and Lindpaintner, did little but reproduce
the salient features of their predecessors more or less faithfully.
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