The medieval studies which Wagner had begun for his work at the libretto of Tannhauser bore rich fruit in his next opera Lohengrin, in which he also developed his principles on a larger scale and with a riper technique than hitherto.
But he took the score with him to Paris, and, as he himself tells us, " when ill, miserable and despairing, I sat brooding over my fate, my eye fell on the score of my Lohengrin, which I had totally forgotten.
Lohengrin was, in fact, produced at Weimar under Liszt's direction on the 28th of August 1850.
Lohengrin was, however, produced on the 15th of May 1861, when Wagner heard it for the first time.
Wagner's earlier works have too long been treated as if they represented the pure and healthy childhood of his later ideal; as if Lohengrin stood to Parsifal as Haydn, Mozart and early Beethoven stand to Beethoven's last quartets.