Voice and Piano
SKU:
BT.EMBZ20017A
New
Liszt Edition, Series IX.
Vol.2.. By David
Trippett. By Franz Liszt.
EMB New Listz Edition.
Classical. Book
Hardcover. Composed 2019.
180 pages. Editio Musica
Budapest #EMBZ20017A.
Published by Editio
Musica Budapest
(BT.EMBZ20017A).
English-German-Hungari
an.
In 1845 Franz
Liszt embarked on a
project to compose an
Italian opera based on
Lord Byron’s
tragedy, Sardanapalus
(1821). It was central to
his ambition to attain
status as a major
European composer, with
premieres variously
planned for Milan,
Vienna, Paris and London.
But he abandoned it half
way through, and the
music he completed has
lain silently for 170
years.
Liszt’s difficulty
in obtaining a libretto
meant that composition
only began in April 1850.
He completed virtually
all the music for Act 1
in an annotated
piano-vocal score of 111
pages, contained within
his N4 music
‘sketch
book’. The unnamed
librettist was an Italian
poet and political
prisoner, seemingly
living under house
arrest, and a close
acquaintance of Cristina
Belgiojoso. His libretto
survives as underlay in
the N4 sketchbook and has
been critically
reconstructed and
translated.
Sardanapalo is
Liszt’s only
mature opera. While he
consistently referred to
it in French, as
Sardanapale, the
published title of the
Italian opera would
almost certainly have
used the Italian name,
hence this forms the
title of the first
edition. There are three
solo roles and a chorus
of concubines. The
manuscript was previously
thought to be fragmentary
and partially illegible,
but it was finally
deciphered to
international acclaim in
March 2017.
Liszt’s score
offers a richly melodic
style, with elements from
Bellini and Verdi
alongside glimmers of
Wagner and the symphonic
poems ahead: a unique
mixture of Italianate
pastiche and mid-century
harmonic innovation. It
remains quintessentially
Lisztian. The opera sets
Byron’s tragedy
about war and peace in
ancient Assyria: the last
King, effeminate in his
tastes, is drawn to wine,
concubines and feasts
more than politics and
war: his subjects find
him dishonourable (a
‘man queen’)
and military rebels seek
to overthrow him, but are
pardoned, for the King
rejects the ‘deceit
of glory’ built on
others’ suffering:
this leads only to a
larger uprising, the
Euphrates floods its
banks, destroying the
castle’s main
defensive wall, and
defeat is inevitable: the
King sends his family
away and orders that he
be burned alive with his
lover, amid scents and
spices in a grand
inferno. As Byron put it:
‘not a mere pillar
formed of cloud and
flame, but a light to
lessen ages.’ For
his part, Liszt told a
friend that his finale
‘will even aim to
set fire to the entire
audience!’
This critical edition
includes a detailed study
on the genesis of
Liszt’s
Sardanapalo in English,
German, and Hungarian,
the libretto in the
original Italian as well
as in English, German,
and Hungarian
translation, several
facsimile pages of
Liszt’s
manuscript, and a
detailed Critical
Report.