Although operas like Heinrich Hofmann's Armin or Edmund Kretschmer's Die Folkunger close with jubilation for the reunited couples and celebratory choruses of their liberated people, such happy endings became increasingly rare as the century proceeded. While tragic conclusions had long been the rule across the European operatic traditions, towards the fin de siècle the mandatory death(s) of the protagonist(s) acquired a striking transcendental dimension that had not been as conspicuous earlier in the nineteenth century. The finale of Grammann's opera Thusnelda is a case in point. The eponymous heroine is ridiculed by the Romans, refuses to join the Germanic rescue mission and stabs herself. Her death is the signal for the Germanic legionaries to kill themselves and to rejoin the fatherland in death. As Thusnelda dies, an electric ray of light falls on her head, surrounding it like a halo. She envisages the hall of the gods and Hermann welcoming her, and prophesies that German warriors will invade Rome victoriously. Her dying scene, therefore, points beyond the actual plot towards a brighter future and a higher purpose, which ennobles her suicide into a sacrifice for the (future) German nation. Her Roman adversary Germanicus acknowledges this deeper meaning by placing his laurel wreath on her body.

From such a finale it is only a small step to the ‘redemption operas’ (Erlösungsopern) of the post-Wagnerian generation. Contemporary critics and modern musicologists alike have observed a preference for plots that hinge on redemptive acts in various forms and shapes.