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.