National Orchestra of Wales
(Cerddorfa Genedlaethol Cymru)

Russlan and Ludmilla, based on one of Pushkin's poems, is a rather strange mixture of fairy lore and Russian legend. Ludmilla, the daughter of a Grand Duke, has three suitors, of whom she prefers the Knight Russian. She is carried off by magic powers, and the whole story is taken up with Russian's heroic conflict with these; he overcomes one dread magic spell after another to win his bride in the end.
Wagner was fond of introducing real personages from history into his operas,and several of the characters in Tannhauser actually belonged to the age which the Opera describes. Wolfram von Eschenbach, who appears as one of the Minstrel Knights, was a distinguished poet of those far-off days; some have thought him the most important figure in the literature of the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. He counted himself a soldier rather than a poet, and there is no doubt that witii spear ana swora he did noble service on behalf of the Landgrave Hermann, his feudal chief in the opera, as in real life he actually was.
This beautiful song is taken from the third Act of the Opera. Elizabeth has been praying for the errant Tannhauser at a wayside shrine, and has sadly and gently declined Wolfram's offer to escort her home to the Castle. He sings this song, as he watches her climb the heights, with the evening star rising in the sky above the Wartburg.