YMMV / Lohengrin

• Awesome Music:
  • The Prelude is hailed as one of Richard Wagner's most beautiful.
  • The famous "Treulich geführt" (Bridal Chorus) piece, better known as ''Here Comes the Bride'' or ''Wedding March''. Funnily enough, even though that piece is commonly known as "Here Comes the Bride", in the opera, it is actually "Here Goes the Bride": it's the theme that plays after the marriage ceremony.
  • Not to mention Elsa's Procession to the Cathedral, one of the most recognizable themes in orchestral music and one of the defining pieces of the full and rich Wagnerian orchestra.
• Fridge Brilliance:
  • When Telramund is pressing the king to resolve the case in his favor, he reminds him of his brave deeds in fighting the Danes. This backfires. The king decides that he's so biased in Telramund's favor (thanks to those great services) that he can't decide the issue fairly himself... only God can, which means trial by combat.
  • Lohengrin's decision to refuse the title of Duke feels strange at first… Brabant isn't the Holy Land, so he doesn't have the motivation of Godefroy de Bouillon. But on reflection this creates a parallel with Wagner's earlier opera Rienzi. In each case the existing ruler (Telramund, and the Colonna/Orsini families) is aristocratic and rules for the sake of personal pride. The usurping hero (Lohengrin, and Rienzi) rules for the sake of the people. Since Germany was not yet unified at the time these operas were written, they're expressions of Wagner's vision of unification – under visionary leaders who prefer national to personal pride. Of course, after Wagner was dead, the unified Germany got badly shellacked in two dreadful wars, one under a traditional aristocrat and one under a Man of the People who was inspired by these very operas. So maybe they were damned either way.

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