It would
have been useless to sweep away the old conventions if he had had
nothing to set in their place. Apart from the strictly musical side of
the question, Wagner had in 'Tannhaeuser' a story of far deeper human
interest than the weird legend of the Dutchman, the tale which never
grows old of the struggle of good and evil for a human soul, the tale of
a remorseful sinner won from the powers of hell by the might of a pure
woman's love.
There is a legend which tells that when the gods and goddesses fled from
their palace on Olympus before the advance of Christianity, Venus betook
herself to the North, and established her court in the bowels of the
earth, beneath the hill of Hoerselberg in Thuringia. There we find the
minstrel Tannhaeuser at the opening of the opera. He has left the world
above, its strifes and its duties, for the wicked delights of the grotto
of Venus. There he lies in the embraces of the siren goddess, while life
passes in a ceaseless orgy of sinful pleasure. But the poet wearies of
his amorous captivity, and would fain return to the earth once more. In
vain the goddess pleads, in vain she calls up new scenes of ravishing
delight, he still prays to be gone. Finally he calls on the sainted name
of Mary, and Venus with her nymphs, grotto, palace and all, sink into
the earth with a thunder-clap, while Tannhaeuser, when he comes to his
senses once more, finds himself kneeling upon the green grass on the
slope of a sequestered valley, lulled by the tinkling bells of the flock
and the piping of a shepherd from a rock hard by.
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