Based on the German Arthurian literary character Lohengrin, Richard Wagner's three act Romantic opera concerns the son of Parzival (Percival), a knight of the Holy Grail who sent in a boat pulled by swans to rescue a maiden who can never ask his identity. The story of Lohengrin, which first appears in Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival, is a version of the Knight of the Swan legend known from a variety of medieval sources.
Although advertised as a burlesque Italian Opera extravaganza ('out-Wagnering Wagner'), there are only minor references to Wagner's Lohengrin (1848) in the cast list. The major characters introduced by Bent are a prima donna, a composer, a stage 'Mis-Manager,' a 'piratical baron,' a village tenor, the 'Count of Clifton Hill,' and a stage assassin (Age 5 December 1885, p.12).
The first production of Lohengrin was at the Staatskapelle Weimar, in Weimar, Germany on 28 August 1850. It was produced under the direction of Franz Liszt.