O Star of Eve, from 'Tannhauser'....Wagner
The Third Act of Wagner's Opera is laid in the Valley of the Wartburg, at evening.
Wolfram, Tannhauser's friend, approaches. He loves Elisabeth, but has effaced himself on seeing how greatly she and Tannhauser love each other. He has seen her praying by a wayside shrine for the absent knight, whose return from his pilgrimage of penitence is now expected; and after she has gone. Wolfram takes his harp and sings of her to whom he must soon bid farewell, never more to see her.
Ivanhoe was Sullivan's only Grand Opera. Though it had considerable success, it never attained the fame of his Comic Operas.
Two Norman knights have captured a Saxon Thane and his daughter. In the castle in which the captives lie a Jewish maiden is also con fined.
The knights are paying court to the ladies. each in his own fashion. One of them, who loves the Saxon maiden, has just declared, 'I must begone to woo my captive fair.' As he goes out, the other soliloquizes: 'Woo thou thy snowflake till she melt for thee. Another and a wilder bliss be mine: my lovely Jewess!'