La Dafne of the river god. The second arrow causes the object of his desire to flee from him. As Daphne rejects his advances, she calls out to her mother for help and is turned into a laurel tree to avoid his love. Still in love with Daphne, Apollo makes the laurel the emblem of his love forever and a sign of victory and award throughout ancient Greece. Notes Sources La Dafne La Dafne ("Daphne") is an early Italian opera, written in 1608 by the Italian composer Marco da Gagliano from a libretto by Ottavio Rinuccini. It is described as a "favola
The Wood Nymph the "erotic harmonic vocabulary" of "Tristan und Isolde" in the third section and the "motive of the forbidden question" from "Lohengrin" in the funereal march from the finale. In light of Sibelius's "Nietzschean response" to Wagner's operas (initially enamored, Sibelius by July 1894 had repudiated Wagner's ideas as "calculated" and "manufactured"), such observations are of particular interest in that they illustrate the extent to which Sibelius, at the time of "The Wood Nymph", had not yet succeeded in breaking with the German master. A few musicologists have speculated that "The Wood Nymph" is potentially autobiographical. Murtomäki, most notably, has argued