The paper examines the recitative portions of each of the three Hymns to Venus from Wagner's opera Tannhauser (Act I, scene 2), in which expressionistic, apparently anomalous chord progressions are featured. In each case, the questionable voice-leading involves an apparent prolongation of the dominant function at the end of the recitative by a variety of neighboring diminished-seventh chords. A better explanation of these passages involves a subsurface tetrachordal bass descent at the heart of each Hymn; the predominant function is seen in each case to engulf incidental dominant harmonies that are initially heard as structural. The analyses raise a larger issue: even if an initial dominant arrival is accented prominently, it may not be appropriate to connect it analytically to a subsequent dominant function. Supplemental discussion of this issue makes reference to the Introduction to the first movement of Schubert's Fourth Symphony and other relevant examples, in which the temptation to assign structural significance to apparent dominant arrivals is overcome.