Thesis project of Wagner's opera

Lohengrin: Relationship as a Necessary Illusion

As many believe, Wagner's Lohengrin, from an allegorical appeal, culled from myth and legend figures. Swans, knights and veiled identity can be viewed as the symbols of rescue, love, and faith, which are common themes in the medieval literature. Therefore, most of the design approaches to Lohengrin have been presenting a romantic vision, with a mix of history and myth, which is a deeply emotional romance of good and evil and should be staged in romantic terms.
However, I believe that Wagner has much more to tell us about the nature of relationships and the dialectics between relationships and other forces. Lohengrin, as I propose, can be an opera that explores the dynamics of relationships between lovers, such as Lohengrin and Elsa. Relationship is an unfinished business that never ends. We are always persons with a past and a future. Both the past and future are somewhat uncertain, dialogic in the sense that we always contemplate them through our relationships with others. It is easy to see that the depth or intimacy dimension of a relationship has been associated with self-disclosure, self-revelation, and intimacy. The conflict between Swan Knight and Elsa in the bridal room is such an argumentative process in which Elsa expects to know the most important self-relevant and secret information from the Swan Knight. That is his real identity. Elsa feels, as her relationship with the Swan Knight develops to a husband-wife level and as a result of the increased intimacy, that she is legitimized to know the Swan Knight's past. And this act of mutual revelation is validated in the timing of a bridal night when their relationship is in a turning point and will cover more intimacy.
It is common that people in intimate relationships often come to see one another not simply as individuals, but one with a past. To know more about another's past gives one more sense of understanding and trust. The affective dimensions are further linked with commitment which is the expectation that a relationship will continue into the future. How can one commit him or herself to another without knowing his or her past? It is unimaginable, and it is why Elsa wants to elicit the Swan Kinght's deepest secret, his veiled identity. Eventually, she owns his past but in the cost that this information does not increase the attraction of the Knight who is actually a Supernatural Power. Rather, she hardly can deal with that information which only caused her feelings of frustration and illusion. And her illusion is necessary at this point because her future is dialogically intertwined with the Sawn Knight's past, considering that his past, as not being a human, does not reflect and even is against a future of being a King, a role that she expects him to be. As many argue that it is doubt that invaded Elsa's soul and thus she lost her love and innocence. Such an opinion implicitly ascribes that Elsa as a silly character who is devoted to secret testing. However, I see Elsa is such a vivid and strategic person in the sense that her act of secret testing is a gesture of affinity testing, an act of building intimacy, and a strategic plan to make of a bright future. This is all to the good and it is common among mundane people, like you and me, between and within anyone to whom we want to make a commitment. However, can we really own one's past? Do we have the right of and access to that kind of ownership? And why? How do we deal with that past after we own it?
Therefore, Lohengrin is neither a myth, nor a romantic story for me. It draws a very, very complex map of relational phenomena that occur in any kind of relationship, in any time and space. The way it reveals the relational dilemma of mutual revelation and interdependence in intimate relationship is almost modern, universal and timeless. It proves, somehow sadly, that all our attempts to bring another closer are a necessary illusion at last.