The "Bridal Chorus" "Treulich geführt", from the 1850 opera Lohengrin, by German composer Richard Wagner, is a march played for the bride's entrance at many formal weddings throughout the Western world. In English-speaking countries it is generally known as "Here Comes the Bride" or "Wedding March" (though actually "wedding march" refers to any piece in march tempo accompanying the entrance or exit of the bride, notably Felix Mendelssohn's "Wedding March").
Its usual placement at the beginning of a wedding ceremony is not entirely in accordance with its placement in the opera. In the opera, the chorus is sung after the ceremony by the women of the wedding party, as they accompany the heroine Elsa to the bridal chamber. In addition, the marriage between Elsa and Lohengrin is an almost immediate failure. While the song is traditionally associated with positive emotions, during weddings, within the context of the play it occurs before several guests are murdered.
The "Bridal Chorus" is seldom played at Jewish weddings. This is often because of cultural objections, due to Wagner's reputation as an antisemite. It is also opposed by many pastors of the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod because of pre-First World War Lutheran opposition to the theater and to the pagan elements of Wagner's operas. The Roman Catholic Church generally does not use the "Bridal Chorus"; one diocese's guidelines regarding the piece states that the chorus is a secular piece of music, that it is not a processional to the altar in the opera, and especially that its frequent use in film and television associate it with sentimentality rather than worship.
Famous quotes containing the words bridal and/or chorus:
“It was my bridal night I remember,
An old man of seventy-three
I lay with my young bride in my arms,
A girl with t.b.”
—Stevie Smith (1902–1971)
“I never can hear a crowd of people singing and gesticulating, all together, at an Italian opera, without fancying myself at Athens, listening to that particular tragedy, by Sophocles, in which he introduces a full chorus of turkeys, who set about bewailing the death of Meleager.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1845)