and Elsa – a theme he would publicly develop in his 1851 autobiographical essay A Communication To My Friends. Elsa's punishment, Wagner argues, cannot be chastisement or death but that her separation from Lohengrin: 'this idea of separation- which, if it were left out, would require a total transformation of the subject and probably allow no more than its most superficial externals to be retained'. Franck's concern appears to be that this particular punishment of separation will make the opera incapable 'of being dramatically effective in a unified way'. Wagner confesses that Franck's concerns have forced him to look objectively at the poem and to consider ways of making Lohengrin's involvement in the tragic outcome clearer than had previously been the case. To this end, Wagner decided not to alter Act I or II but to write new lines in Act III: (Wagner wrote five additional lines here but they were rejected in the final draft). Later, in the same act, when Elsa calls on Lohengrin to punish her, the latter replies: Wagner asks Franck if he should explicitly mention the specific rule associated with the Grail which, although not expressly forbidding the Grail knights from committing such excesses, nevertheless, discourages them from acting in this way. Wagner's opinion is that it should be sufficient for the audience to deduce the Grail's advice. Readers of the libretto in English will note that in Amanda Holden's 1990 singing translation for the English National Opera, the Grail's advice is transformed into an explicit commandment, with Holden acknowledging, on her website, that translating a libretto is effectively writing a new one "despite its compulsory faithfulness to the original". There's one atonement, penance for your crime! Ah! I as you suffer this cruel pain! We must be parted! You must understand: this the atonement, this the Grail's command! Having completed the second complete draft of Act III ten months later on 5 March 1847, Wagner returned to the beginning of Act I and began work on the second draft of Act I on 12 May and which was complete on 8 June 1847. The second complete draft of Act II was started on 18 June and complete on 2 August 1847. In a letter to Ferdinand Heine dated 6 August 1847, Wagner announced that he had completed the Lohengrin opera: I feel pleased and happy as a result, since I am well satisfied with