A well-known depiction of collective listening on the operatic stage occurs in Act I of Wagner’s Lohengrin(1850): the Herald asks the assembled Brabantians whether there is a champion among them to defend Elsa against the accusation by her former suitor, Friedrich, that she murdered her younger brother Gottfried, the Duke of Brabant. These are uncomfortable moments for Elsa. There is an eerie silence after the first question (‘he is surely a long way off and could not hear’), and there appears – for a time at least – to be no reply to the second question either (Example 6.1).Wagner’s stage directions describe these as a ‘long silence’ and a ‘long, awkward silence’ respectively, implying that the growing tension of the second silence – with added tritone in the bass tuba – is akin to that moment after an awkward exchange in public, where the tumbleweed rolls, the wind blows.