what I have done. As outlined to Heine, Wagner's plan was to build on the success of the premiere of Rienzi in Berlin on 24 October 1847 with a follow-up performance of Lohengrin. As it turned out Rienzi in Berlin was not a success and Lohengrin was not performed there until 1859. Composition of the full score began three months later on 1 January 1848, and by 28 April 1848 the composition of Lohengrin was complete. In September 1848 Wagner conducted excerpts from Act I at a concert in Dresden to mark the 300th anniversary of the court orchestra (later Dresden Staatskapelle). Musical styleLohengrin occupies an ambivalent position within Wagner's aesthetic oeuvre. Despite Wagner's ostensible rejection of French grand opéra, Lohengrin, like all Wagner's operas, and for that matter his later musikdramas, owes some debt to the form as practised by Auber, Halévy and, irrespective of what Wagner sets out in his prose writings, Meyerbeer. Lohengrin is also the last of Wagner's four "Romantic" operas, and continues with the associative style of tonality that he had previously developed in Tannhäuser. And Lohengrin is also the last of his composed works before his political exile, and despite the seventeen-year-long performance hiatus, Lohengrins musical style nevertheless anticipates Wagner's future leitmotif technique. Performance history The first production of Lohengrin was in Weimar, Germany, on 28 August 1850 at the Staatskapelle Weimar under the direction of Franz Liszt, a close friend and early supporter of Wagner. Liszt chose the date in honour of Weimar's most famous citizen, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who was born on 28 August 1749. Despite the inadequacies of the lead tenor Karl Beck, it was an immediate popular success. Wagner himself was unable to attend the first performance, having been exiled because of his part in the 1849 May Uprising in Dresden. Although he conducted various extracts in concert in Zurich, London, Paris and Brussels, it was not until 1861 in Vienna that he was able to attend a full performance. The opera's first performance outside German-speaking lands was in Riga on 5 February 1855. The Austrian premiere took place in Vienna at the Theater am Kärntnertor on 19 August 1858, with Róza Csillag as Ortrud. The work was produced in Munich for the first time at the National Theatre on 16 June 1867, with Heinrich Vogl in the title role and Mathilde Mallinger as Elsa. Mallinger also took the