Not with a Bang but a Whimper: The Death of Liszt's "Sardanapale"

Not with a Bang but a Whimper: The Death of Liszt's "Sardanapale"Author(s): Kenneth HamiltonSource: Cambridge Opera Journal, Vol. 8, No. 1 (Mar., 1996), pp. 45-58Published by: Cambridge University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/823701 .

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Cambridge Opera Journal, 8, 1, 45-58 Copyright ? 1996 Cambridge University Press

Not with a bang but a whimper: The death of Liszt's Sardanapale KENNETH HAMILTON

Few things are more comforting to those with a tendency to procrastination than the knowledge that the fault is hardly unique. Few examples of procrastination are as magnificently extended, or should offer more solace to an author who has missed a deadline, as the history of Liszt's Sardanapale. Not only is the protracted gestation of this ultimately abandoned opera fascinating in its own right, and central to our view of Liszt's early Weimar years; it also illustrates a familiar maxim that in music, as in other human activities, the amount of talk is often in inverse proportion to the action.

The desire for success as an opera composer is a recurrent theme of Liszt's correspondence in the 1840s. By that time he had established himself as the most famous pianist in Europe, a reputation bolstered by a long series of concert tours that garnered both unequalled acclaim and unrivalled amounts of money. But although Liszt basked in the adulation of the concert-going public, he was well aware that his fame as a virtuoso was in danger of eclipsing his reputation as a composer. In a review of the Dougegrandes etudes (1837), some of his most important published music, Robert Schumann claimed that Liszt had concentrated on pianism at the expense of his development as a composer, and prophesied that this neglect would be evident even in future compositions.1 Liszt could probably have borne Schumann's counsel of despair more easily had it not been echoed by public opinion, which tended to regard his original compositions as the bizarre aberration of a performer of genius. Moreover, in the years following the Grandes etudes it must indeed have seemed that Liszt's composing was merely an adjunct to his concert activity, for most of his published works from 1839 to 1844 were opera fantasias and transcriptions designed to thrill rather than uplift. A closer inspection of the best of these pieces shows them to be far superior to other essays in the genre and highly creative works in their own right, but they still left Liszt open to the charge of arraying himself in borrowed finery. Even as late as 1850, the magnificent Fantasy and Fugue on Ad nos, ad salutarem undam from Meyerbeer's Le Prophete, an organ piece about as far removed from the glittering world of the opera fantasy as one could get, prompted this puzzled reaction from Joachim Raff:

I have gone through the Prophite fugue with great interest. You know, it is a mystery to me how you can take such pains over the arrangement of a theme like this. With the same expenditure of invention you could easily have produced an original composition of the highest significance and one would never again have to hear it said that you have to fasten on Meyerbeer because of a lack of original invention.2

1 Schumann, Music and Musicians, trans. F. Ritter (London, 1878) I, 351. 2 Helene Raff, Fran LisZt undJoachim Raff im Spiegel ihrer Briefe, in Die Musik, 1.2 (1901), 866.



The death of Liszt's Sardanapale

In fact the 765 bars of this long and complex work are developed from exactly eight bars of Meyerbeer - there is more Diabelli in Beethoven's Diabelli Variations than there is Meyerbeer in the Fantasy and Fugue. Yet if a Liszt supporter and fellow composer such as Raff could regard even it as an arrangement, there was little hope of Liszt being given any credit for witty and ingenious pieces such as the Fantasy on Robert le Diable.

Liszt's writings contributed to the general impression that composition was for him an accessory to the piano. In an oft-quoted letter to Adolphe Pictet, written for public consumption and published in the Revue etgaZette musicale of 11 February 1838, he declared his love of the piano in prose that would have ensured him a steady income as a screenwriter for Cecil B. de Mille:

even you are surprised to see me so exclusively occupied with the piano, and so little hurried to essay the wider field of symphonic and dramatic composition.... You do not know that to talk to me about giving up the piano is to make me look upon a day of sorrow. ... For, you see, my piano is to me as his ship is to a sailor, or his steed to an Arab; even more perhaps, for until now my piano is me, it is my speech - my life. It is the intimate repository of all that went on in my mind during the most passionate days of my youth. ... and you, my friend, would like me to abandon it to run after the more glittering successes of the theatre and the orchestra? Oh, no! Even if I admitted what you too easily assert, that I am now ready for music of this kind, my firm resolution is not to abandon the study and development of the piano until I have accomplished everything possible with it.3

Liszt obviously felt it would ruin the effect to mention that he already had one opera to his credit. Written in 1824 by the thirteen-year-old prodigy, Don Sanche, ou le Chateau d'Amourwas given a run of four performances at the Paris Opera in 1825, the first on 17 October. The one-act libretto was written by Theaulon and de Rance based on a story by Claris de Florian, and it contains all the Ritter-Romantik stock ingredients of knights in shining armour, castles of love, wizards and ravishing maidens. The fact that the adolescent Liszt had as yet no personal experience of any of these items (he was soon to become very familiar with the last) is painfully obvious in the score, which is slickly constructed but musically negligible. The opera was received indulgently as the astonishing product of a precocious talent, but, after the novelty had worn off, its demise was swift. Nevertheless, Liszt's achievement in getting an opera produced at all must have been the envy of struggling young composers such as Berlioz, for whom a production at the Opera - the most prestigious theatre in Europe - represented the pinnacle of ambition, a success there virtually ensuring an international reputation. Although Liszt's opera was a four-night wonder, it had allowed him to work with Rudolph Kreutzer, the conductor and musical director of the Opera, and Adolphe Nourrit, the Caruso of his day. When, on the opening night, Nourrit carried the diminutive composer on to the stage to receive the applause, audience reaction was ecstatic. The fact that Liszt if anything looked even younger than his fourteen years contributed to the enthusiasm. To paraphrase Dr Johnson, the remarkable thing was not that it was done well, but that it was done at all. 3 Quoted from Jean Chantavoine, FranZ Liszt: Pages Romantiques (Paris, 1912), 134-5.

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The great impact that one might have expected Liszt to make as a composer in the few years after Don Sanche was not to be. He added at least one piano concerto and three solo piano sonatas to his portfolio, soon after a sonata for piano duet. None of these works was published, but the Etudes en douge exercises made their appearance in print in 1826, over ten years later forming the basis of the Doute grandes etudes. These ten years saw a rather meagre harvest of published pieces, despite the startlingly innovative Apparitions (1834) and the Harmonies poetiques et religieuses (1833-5). Liszt had sketched a Revolutionary Symphony in 1830 - a response to the Paris July revolution - and composed several works for piano and orchestra around 1833-4 (the Malediction Concerto, De Profundis Psaume Instrumental, Liio Fantasy). The first inspirations for what were eventually to become the two familiar piano concerti in E flat and A also date from the early 1830s, but since none of this music was published at the time, public awareness of Liszt as a composer was scanty in the extreme. By 1840 his public profile as a composer was concentrated almost exclusively on piano music; Don Sanche was forgotten, even by the composer himself.

The years 1840-7 mark the peak of Liszt's Glanzgeit- his 'glory days' as a touring virtuoso. They are also paradoxically characterised by his growing disenchantment with the gypsy life forced on a travelling performer. The lustre of successes in Berlin, Paris and Vienna have to be seen against the glamour of giving a concert in a near deserted hall in Coventry, or being forced to travel from Ayr to Glasgow in an open cattle-wagon (the cattle still in residence) - an unfortunate conveyance for the 'King of Pianists'. Often his frustration at the endless round of concerts was vented in letters:

For the rest, the deepest, the most unbelievable monotony. Concert in the morning, concert in the evening, and always with the same programme! For I am the only one who retains the ability to vary his pieces, considering that, as a special favour, the programmes do not mention specially the Fantasias that I am obliged to serve up as hot as possible.4

The obvious escape route from this tedium was composition, and the surest way to make an impact in composition was an operatic hit. From the first, Liszt's confidante was the fascinating, intellectual and - incidentally - extremely attractive Princess Cristina Belgiojoso. She had settled in Paris after having been forced to leave her native Milan on account of her opposition to the Austrian domination of Lombardy. Conveniently alone after her husband, Prince Emilio Belgiojoso, had disappeared to Switzerland with his mistress, Princess Belgiojoso soon formed an artistic coterie in her salon that included writers such as Dumas and Heine as well as many of the outstanding musicians of the day. Liszt had known her since the mid-1830s. On 31 March 1837 she had hosted the well-known contest between Liszt and Thalberg for pianistic supremacy, the only lasting outcome of which was Hexameron, a set of variations on 'Suoni la tromba' from Bellini's Ipuritani with contributions from six different composers - Liszt and Thalberg among them. The piece was supposed to be performed on 31 March, but failed to materialise. Most of the composers missed their deadline so badly that the piece was not ready until

4 Jacques Vier, Franz Lis.t. L'Artiste-Le Clerc. Documents Inedits (Paris, 1950), 58.

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December. It soon became one of Liszt's most popular concert war-horses and gets the occasional rare outing even today from hardy pianists who can cope with the sheer tedium of practising the variations of Pixis, Herz, Thalberg and Czerny along with those of Chopin and Liszt.

Liszt and the Princess kept in frequent touch throughout the late 1830s and 40s, and it is from their correspondence that we can build up the clearest picture of the development of Liszt's operatic ambitions, the climax of which would be the abortive Sardanapale. Liszt's initial intention, however, was a Byronic opera based on Le Corsaire. In October 1841 he wrote to Belgiojoso, who by this time had found it safe to spend some of her time at her palace at Locato, south of Milan, that he intended to spend the next three years concluding his concert career. At the same time he planned to compose Le Corsaire, which he would produce at Venice in the winter of 1843.5 His idea seems to have been to ease himself gradually out of concert life into that of a composer, for in November 1842 he accepted an appointment as honorary Kapellmeister at Weimar. This position demanded only three months' stay per year in the small town, but Liszt evidently found even this commitment rather onerous. Most of his time was still devoted to concert tours, and the winter of 1843-4 was the only time he fulfilled his duties to the letter. Meanwhile Le Corsaire remained more discussed than composed. He appears to have commissioned a libretto from an unknown author in April 1842, but found it unsatisfactory.6 By February 1844 he had another libretto, put together by Alexandre Dumas, and another city of production - Paris rather than Venice.7 Finally, by March 1845, he was back to the idea of producing Le Corsaire in Italy.8 Paris had now been ruled out because of the break-up of his relationship with the Countess d'Agoult, knowledge of her presence in the city leading him to find another venue. As it happens, he was right to fear the malice of his former mistress: while he was merely talking about composing an opera, she was getting down to action, penning her instrument of revenge against Liszt - the novel Nelida. Liszt, for his part, after having written about Le Corsaire for four years, changed his librettist once and his place of production twice, abandoned the project without writing a note.

Le Corsaire might have been consigned to the scrap heap, but the desire for an operatic triumph had not. A stay in October 1845 with Princess Belgiojoso in Paris led to the conception of an opera based on Byron's play Sardanapalus. This is the only one of Liszt's projected operas for which he began to write music, and the only one which has received any great degree of attention by scholars. The Goethe-und- Schiller-Archiv in Weimar holds a sketch book (MS N.4) containing 111 pages of music for the opera, and another (anonymous) document setting out a very detailed prose scenario in French. Although the language of the text in the musical sketches

5 Daniel OUlivier, Autour de Madame d'Agoult et de Liszt (Paris, 1941), 181-2. Subsequent page numbers will be in the main text.

6 Ollivier, Correspondance de Liszt et de la Comtesse d'Agoult (Paris, 1933-4), II, 209.

7 Ibid., II, 332. 8 Vier, Frang Liszt, 68.

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Kenneth Hamilton

is Italian, it has hitherto been thought that the Weimar scenario formed the basis of the eventual libretto, Liszt's distinctly casual acquaintance with Italian necessitating the initial working in French. In The Music of LisZt, Humphrey Searle gave a summary of the plot of the Weimar scenario, assumed that this was carried over unchanged to the finished libretto, and assigned the whole tentatively to an obscure Italian poet called Rotondi. This attribution has been followed by other writers on the subject.9 The genesis of Sardanapale (the Italian title) is, however, a complex detective story. Like most detective stories, it has at least two red herrings, and in any Strange Case of Sardanapale, Rotondi and the Weimar scenario would fit the bill. Neither has anything to do with the libretto Liszt actually set as Sardanapale, as will become clear later.

Byron's Sardanapalus was written in 1821, loosely based on the historical narrative of Diodorus Siculus. The eponymous protagonist is a king of Assyria torn between the demands of his position and his love for an Ionian slave-girl, Myrrha. To this upstairs-downstairs love story, with its adumbrations of so many Romantic opera plots, is added a political intrigue of rebellious nobles, appalled at the monarch's hedonistic behaviour and demeaning sensual indulgence. In a spectacular final gesture Sardanapalus, defeated in battle, orders a funeral pyre to be lit, on which he and his love are united in death. Byron's treatment of this final scene is a hymn to Romantic love that strikingly foreshadows elements of the equally pyrotechnic close of Wagner's Gotterddmmerung. This love-death finale was one of Byron's many alterations to Diodorus Siculus. Byron's Sardanapalus bears about as much relation to the Diodorus character as Albert Schweitzer does to Vlad the Impaler. Not only does he die movingly united with his added love-interest, but in a thoughtful gesture he divides up his treasure among his friends before he departs. The reality according to Diodorus was not the Romantic self-immolation of two lovers, but the debauched, sadistic voyeurism of the famous Delacroix painting of the scene. Delacroix's Death of Sardanapalus, first exhibited in Paris in 1828, shows the oriental despot lying on an ornate couch on the centre of the funeral pyre. Prior to the burning he has ordered his treasure heaped around him, treasure that includes his harem of concubines who are being knifed to death by his guards as he watches. Sardanapalus, his eyes slightly hooded in what seems like an alcohol-induced torpor (judging by the large flask of wine by his side), looks on with an air of boredom as one of the most beautiful of the naked houris receives the death blow. The colouring of the painting is vivid and sensual; the image one of depravity recalling the worst of Suetonius's accounts of the Roman Emperor Tiberius. Needless to say, it was a massive success, and became one of the icons of Romanticism in art.

Liszt's opera was not the first treatment of the story in early nineteenth-century music. He had been present at the second performance of Berlioz's Prix-de-Rome winning Sardanapalus cantata in 1830 and from that time struck up a strong friendship with the composer. No doubt inspired by Delacroix more than the pedestrian text he

9 Humphrey Searle, The Music of LisZt, 2nd edn (New York, 1966), 89-91. See also Sharon Winklhofer, Liszt's Sonata in B-minor (Ann Arbor, 1980), 21-4, and Laszlo6 Szelenyi, 'Liszt's Opernpliine', in LisZt Studien, 1 (Graz, 1977), 218-19.

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had been given to set, Berlioz had written an orchestral Incendie at the climax of his cantata. The operatic possibilities of such a finale were obvious, especially given the popularity of such conclusions as the volcanic eruption of Auber's La Muette de Portici, which allowed the stage designers to exercise their talents for fire and turmoil to the full. Byron's poem also appeared rich in other staple scenes of opera - an orgy scene counterpointed by a storm outside (a piece of dramatic irony not designed to appeal to the subtle) is immediately followed by news of rebellion and battle. Moreover, the relationship between Sardanapalus and Myrrha provided a profusion of opportunities for a composer to demonstrate his lyrical gifts.

The immolation scene fixed before his eyes, Liszt was fired with enthusiasm. In discussions with Belgiojoso he had decided that the opera would be in Italian, and since his command of the language was not great, he would need the Princess's help in dealing with any problems over the libretto. His first idea appears to have been to commission a scenario in French from which the Princess herself, or one of her Italian contacts, would produce a libretto. We might pause at this point to ask why Liszt did not simply decide to compose a French opera? Le Corsaire had been intended for the French stage, and a French Sardanapale would have needed no intermediary at all (Liszt spoke no Hungarian, and his preferred language was French). It is possible that the considerations that led him to move the projected premiere of Le Corsaire from Paris to Italy - the presence in Paris of Madame d'Agoult - were still uppermost in his mind.

We can only speculate, too, on any personal reasons Liszt might have had in setting up a scheme that would allow him to work closely with Princess Belgiojoso. One thing we know for sure is that by early 1846, and probably even at the time Sardanapale was conceived, he nurtured hopes of succeeding Donizetti in the prestigious post of Kapellmeister at Vienna, a much more attractive appointment than the one he was already assured of at Weimar. To follow a prolific Italian opera composer like Donizetti, experience in composing at least one Italian opera might be thought essential. Prospects of the Vienna post also account for Liszt's swift change of mind in looking for a venue for the premiere of Sardanapale. On 16 December 1845 he wrote to Belgiojoso that he hoped to be able to bring soon a three-act scenario of Sardanapale to Locato for discussion. The opera would be produced in Milan, during the Carnival season of 1846-7 (Ollivier, 191). By 2 April 1846, not only had a scenario not materialised, but the venue had changed. Despite the fact that he still had no scenario in his hands, no libretto, and had written no music, Liszt was confident that soon all production details would be clarified. He informed Belgiojoso:

I have just been told of the impending arrival of Sardanapale. I will have the honour of sending it to you soon. In addition, I will probably have some precise information six weeks from now on the date of the production, and on the singers of the principal roles. Save any unforeseen bad luck, I believe there will be a chance to hiss me off the stage at Vienna in the month of May 1847. (Ollivier, 194)

The biggest problem for Liszt in his hopes to succeed Donizetti at Vienna was not lack of operatic experience; it was that Donizetti was actually still Kapellmeister.

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Kenneth Hamilton

He had certainly been taken seriously ill with tertiary syphilis, but sadly for Liszt was still clinging on to both his job and his life. On 14 April 1846, Liszt explained to d'Agoult (with whom he kept in touch, despite his suspicions of her) how he saw the situation. Once Sardanapale had triumphed, he would follow it up quickly with a French opera, Marguerite, based on Goethe's Faust:

The theatre remains it is true, and we will see our Sardanapale [in Italian in the original]. It will be next season ('47, April or May) in Vienna. At the risk of making an utter fool of myself, this must succeed, and succeed well. Marguerite will come six or eight months after if the door of the Opera is not closed against me, and if it is, I shall stay encamped indefinitely between Vienna and Italy.

Later in the same letter he speculates on his chances for Vienna:

If, unfortunately, Donizetti's illness becomes incurable, it is very probable that a ray of high favour would fall on me, at least I would be a candidate unanimously designated for the post, or any similar one. 10,000 Francs salary for six months' service - or non-service - is not exactly to be looked down on, and the Vienna position is indubitably one of the best possible.10

Before we accuse Liszt of callousness over Donizetti's misfortune, we should remember that he could hardly have expected this letter to be published for the world to read nearly one hundred years later. Few of us, I would hazard, would retain a saintly aura if our private thoughts were exposed to public view.

Liszt's hopes were eventually thwarted: Donizetti, like the melody, lingered on, steadfastly resisting the grim reaper until 1848. Meanwhile, news had spread that Liszt was angling for the Vienna Kapellmeistership, and he was forced to write a conciliatory letter to Carl Alexander of Weimar protesting that he had no intention of abandoning the town. Even if he obtained a position in Vienna it would, he explained with spectacular sophistry, merely be a way of bringing him closer geographically to Weimar!1l

Meanwhile, there had been a hitch with Sardanapale. The scenario he had expected to arrive in early April 1846 was still nowhere to be seen. A subsequent letter to Belgiojoso from October 1846 provides the identity of this errant author:

Belloni [Liszt's secretary] will probably have told you about the difficulties I had with Mallefille, after having broken his word to me the first time (it was agreed he would send me the scenario for Sardanapale on 1 April. April fool! - he now lets the last-appointed time - mid-September - go by). Happily, you have come to my aid. The scenario which you have the goodness to send to me seems so excellent that I doubt greatly that there could be an Italian poet capable of composing such a good one, and that I suspect your Highness, in particular, has been busy working on it. (Ollivier, 20) There can be little doubt that the wretched Mallefille, to whom Liszt later wrote to say 'go to hell', was none other than Jean-Pierre Felicien Mallefille (1813-68), a Parisian novelist and playwright well known for his play Glenarvon (1835), whose full-blooded Romanticism had probably marked him out as a likely adapter of

10 Ollivier, Correpondance, II, 355. 1 La Mara, Briefivechsel Zwischen Frang Liszt und Carl Alexander (Leipzig, 1909), 10.

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Sardanapalus. (Many years later his Deux veuves was to be the basis of Smetana's opera of the same name.) Despite Liszt's angry reaction to Mallefille's unreliability, the scenario does seem eventually to have arrived: the Weimar Sardanapale scenario, though anonymous, is dated 9 December 1846, and comes with an apologetic preface explaining that illness delayed its completion; Mallefille is most likely to have been its author. If this assumption is correct, then by the time it arrived Liszt was already working on the basis of the Belgiojoso scenario mentioned in the letter above. The Mallefille version was probably put in a drawer on arrival and thereafter ignored. Humphrey Searle's Sardanapale plot summary, therefore, is very far from that of Liszt's opera.

What of the Belgiojoso scenario? Liszt was evidently delighted with it, and believed that the Princess herself was the author, despite her insistence that it was the work of an un-named Italian poet. While it is possible that Belgiojoso was simply spinning a yarn, she did, in a subsequent letter, sketch in more detail about this shadowy figure. Liszt had asked her to supervise the creation of a full libretto on the basis of the poet's scenario, expecting, rashly as it turned out, to have the completed article in his hands by December. The Princess replied with a request for payment: I said to you one day that prison had clipped the wings of my nightingale, and that he was not able to undertake or complete any literary commission in the position in which he found himself. The person who told me of this declaration had scarcely understood him and explained himself even worse. ... If it is possible send the 2000 francs very soon, for the place where my unfortunate friend has just spent a year is not Peru, and he came out of it much poorer than he entered. This was not, however, very easy. (Ollivier, 196)

It seems unlikely that Princess Belgiojoso would carry the conceit of a fictitious poet to this extent. Whether or not she made some contribution to the development of the libretto - and the chances are she did have a hand in it, for she was a skilled author who later wrote a history of the 1848 Italian revolt - the main work was surely done by this anonymous friend, someone who shared her political sympathies and who had served some time in jail as a result. If the fact that she nowhere mentions the name of this poet in any of her extant correspondence with Liszt strikes us as peculiar, we should recall that the explanation is found in the same letter, where she claims that she feels she cannot go into any more details about the poet because Liszt does not share her political sympathies. Liszt denied this charge in his reply, but amazingly, it appears he never did find out the name of the poet.

At last, in May 1847, Liszt was told by Belgiojoso of the delivery of the libretto:

I have in my drawer the most beautiful Sardanapale in the world, fruit of the labours and slavery of the same poet to whom I had addressed myself and who sent you by my request a scenario. (Ollivier, 196)

Liszt's reply was immediate:

Your letter has made me very happy: firstly in coming from you, and secondly in informing me of the fulfilment of a desire, of an idea, the adjournment of which I had resigned myself to for better or worse, but had never abandoned. (Ollivier, 197)

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Kenneth Hamilton

When Daniel Ollivier edited both these letters for his book Autour de Madame d'Agoult et de Liszt, which also contains most of the Liszt-Belgiojoso correspondence, he dated them erroneously to 1846 rather than 1847. If we accept Ollivier's dating, then the letter telling of the completion of the libretto was sent several months before the scenario was even written. The only possible chronological sequence is the reverse of this, and giving these letters their logical date also allows us to clear up the second red herring in the story - the enigmatic 'Rotondi'.

Rotondi is usually credited as the author of both the final Sardanapale libretto and the Weimar scenario. We have already argued that the latter is almost certainly by Mallefille. Further reading of Liszt's May 1847 reply to the Princess shows that Rotondi had nothing to do with Sardanapale at all:

Only permit me one last prayer, namely that you make it your business to take the trouble to re-read the whole libretto and, if needs be, that you tell the poet directly about the revisions you consider necessary. The notes and commentaries which you added in the margin of Rotondi's libretto (which I take great care of), are witness to such mastery in this genre that there is no wiser course than to have full confidence in your judgement. (Ollivier, 197-8)

So, Rotondi was the author of yet another opera libretto. This admits of only one possibility. Elsewhere, Liszt mentions a young Italian poet he met in Vienna, and from whom he commissioned a libretto entitled Riccardo alla terZa crociata (after Sir Walter Scott). This libretto, wrote Liszt, had been brought to 'a fine conclusion' (Ollivier, 210). Our redating of the May letters to 1847 makes Rotondi the obvious candidate for the author of Riccardo. Liszt must have sent the completed libretto to Belgiojoso for 'fine tuning', a plausible course given his rudimentary knowledge of Italian. Having eliminated Rotondi from the Sardanapale narrative, we are left, unfortunately, with only the information in the Princess's letters about the true author. As she was careful never to mention his name, he will have to remain irritatingly anonymous unless further information turns up. However, if we now find we know less about Sardanapale than we thought we did, at least we are in a position, as Socrates often said, to recognise our own ignorance.

On receiving the libretto, Liszt felt confident that he would have completed the music by Spring 1848 (Ollivier, 198). This proved to be one of those frequent 'war will be over by Christmas' conjectures that abound in his correspondence about Sardanapale. By the beginning of 1849 he had still written no music, and was beginning to have second thoughts about the libretto. His main contribution to the text as it now stood had been to insist on a truly cataclysmic finale, a la Delacroix: The denouement must be incendiary at every point: Sardanapalus, burning himself not only with Myrrha, but with the forced accompaniment of all his harem, and setting fire to the palace everywhere. (Ollivier, 202) While it is understandable that Liszt would wish an opportunity to rival the Incendie of his friend Berlioz's Sardanapalus cantata, his lack of understanding of the Byron poem is quite astonishing. After having spent three acts developing the love relationship between Sardanapalus and Myrrha, and presumably creating audience sympathy for his hero, he then intends a volte-face in the last scene, turning Byron's

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selfish, hedonistic but basically attractive character back into Diodorus Siculus's sadistic tyrant. And what of Myrrha? Is she modestly to avert her gaze as her lover forces his harem to burn to death?

If this suggestion of Liszt's hints that he might not have a very profound grasp of stagecraft, his new idea in 1849, the insertion of an orgy scene, left even the Princess baffled. She wrote:

I am going to write to your poet to prepare a scene as you wish, but I am not very clear as to how he will manage an orgy scene in which there appears neither wine, amusements, nor indeed women. Have you yourself invented something new? In that case please reveal the secret to your poor poet, for I very much doubt whether a poor devil who has passed from prison to war, and from war to exile has a mind sufficiently attuned to guess such mysteries. As for myself, I propose a trick-orgy, that is to say, grand festive preparations which end with a moonlit walk and a philosophical conversation. Sardanapalus would perhaps not have looked down at that. (Ollivier, 203-4)

We can hazard a guess that the historical Sardanapalus would indeed have looked down on anything that ended with a philosophical conversation, but as a complete copy of the final libretto has not survived, we have no way of knowing whether Liszt's bizarre, onanistic orgy-scene was included. Liszt also expressed doubts about the structure of the opera as a whole and suggested compressing the three acts into two (Ollivier, 202). This idea must have been rejected, because by April 1850 he was still describing it as in three.12

After four years of wrangling, Liszt appears to have started to sketch the Sardanapale music in the middle of 1849. He wrote to Raff in August 1849 expressing the hope that the opera would be finished by the winter.13 (Raff knew Liszt well enough not to hold his breath.) By 1850 he was still working on the opera, which, in writing to his friend d'Ortigue, he evidently regarded as a first priority: I am applying myself well to Sardanapale (Italian text in 3 Acts), which ought to be completed at the end of the year, and in the intervals, I am achieving some of the symphonic works of which I am undertaking a certain series that can only be ready in its entirety in two or three years.14

In January 1851 he wrote to Wagner predicting that the opera would be ready by spring 1852, and produced in Paris or London;15 but after 1851 Sardanapale vanishes from his correspondence. The operatic triumph that he had sought so long was not to be; instead, the symphonic pieces that he was writing 'in the intervals' between work on Sardanapale became the main focus of his Weimar years, along with piano music and, finally, oratorio. What happened?

We can go some way to answering this by examining the Weimar Sardanapale sketches. Sketchbook MS N4 contains not only all the music Liszt wrote for the opera, but also all that is left of the libretto, scrawled, often illegibly, under the vocal line. The difficulty of reading this accounts for the fact that no one ever compared 12 La Mara, Franz Lisats Briefe, VIII (Leipzig, 1905), 62. 13 Raff, Briefe, I, 287. 14 La Mara, Briefe, VIII, 62. 15 Francis Hueffner, The Lis-t-Wagner Correspondence, I (London, 1888), 133.

54



Kenneth Hamilton

Table 1

Pages Section 1 Title - (not in Liszt's hand) 2-5 Orchestral introduction 6-10 Chorus of concubines: 'Vieni, vieni'

11-12 Solo (unidentified) 13-14 Chorus 15-18 Solo - Mirra: 'Oh, del tetto paterno ineffabili gioie, e per sempre perduta al core

affranto della schiava infelice supremo bene rimane che'l pianto' etc. 19-25 Chorus recapitulation (with written comments by Liszt wondering whether to

repeat the entire introduction) 26 Orchestral link 27-48 Solo - Mirra: 'Un'ora di silenzio e d'obblio, oh quante volte ho supplicato in

vano al dolor mio', leading to 'Gia pel piano sull'esto sentiero, lungi il margin del placido rivo' (a two-movement Italian aria structure)

49-57 Solo - Sardanapale: 'Nella tua stanza solitaria e mesta' 58-76 Duet - Mirra-Sardanapale 'Parla, parla' 77 Orchestral link 78-90 Solo (unidentified): 'Mentre a tuo danno, i ribellanti duci' 91-101 Duet Sardanapale-Mirra

102-11 Trio and orchestral march

the Mallefille scenario with the music Liszt wrote. If they had done so, they would have realised that the libretto Liszt set was very different.16 The 111 pages devoted to Sardanapale in MS N4 (the rest of the book includes sketches for orchestral pieces) can be summarised in Table 1.

Allegro maestoso

1i^ fjj I by- t72 ( t

Ex. 1

Although this very basic summary is hampered greatly by the fact that Liszt sometimes misses out sections of text, sometimes makes errors of spelling, and sometimes writes so hastily that the words are impossible to decipher, we can see the general outline of the opera so far: an opening chorus of concubines summoning Sardanapalus to the delights of the harem; an entrance aria for Myrrha - an unhappy slave, yet loved by the king; a long duet between Sardanapalus and Myrrha, at one point interrupted by the entry of a third party telling of the nobles' rebellion; a trio and finally a march - presumably Sardanapalus setting out to battle with the rebels. A fuller discussion of the music must await another article, but apart 16 I am very grateful to Italian linguist Dr Carol Clarke of Balliol College, Oxford, for assisting

with the translation of the Sardanapale libretto.

55



56 The death of Liszt's Sardanapale

,A A .4 dL - I I I . I

)t t ? g . r or r c )(9)r Vhr

ii 1;8 b JJ J J; ; ox^r le ,- L -? 3~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~"~q "'

lD4 =umanyrmj^J r

d

JJ

Andante

Voice a (Mirra) 1r IrI-- ' H

Gia pel pia - no sull

i- r\ x X 'X Xi

^t"i.8 r

lr x x

e - sto sen - tie - ro lung'il mar - - - - gin etc.

etc.

^2# X X 1t * 1 U

Ex. 2



Kenneth Hamilton

from the first two pages, which have a few indications of more detailed orchestration, the score consists of vocal lines plus two staves of accompaniment, all of which could easily be played on the piano. The closing trio has no accompaniment sketched in at all, and the final march breaks off inconclusively. This march does, however, give a good idea of just how radical Liszt's harmonic style could be in Sardanapale (Ex. 1), its tritone harmonies sitting uneasily beside the commonplace rhythmic structure. One other example will provide a view of the musical style. Here the complex chromaticism of the orchestral introduction leads into a surprisingly standard Italianate aria for Mirra (Ex. 2).

We can gather that Liszt's tendency is to marry Italianate melody with very un-Italianate chromatic harmony, the latter usually, but not always, in the passages for orchestra alone. The style is a further development of that heard in the Petrarch sonnet No. 104, which Liszt set as a song before turning it into a piano piece. The common description of the style of Sardanapale as a combination of Bellini and Meyerbeer is rather misleading - neither composer indulged consistently in such ornate chromaticism, though Liszt's melodic style here is undoubtedly of the Bellini-Donizetti type. As in both the above examples, much of Sardanapale seems to be a battleground between Liszt the musical radical, and Liszt the tiro Italian opera composer. Eager for popular success, he seems frequently to rein in his more daring harmonic excursions as soon as the voice enters, producing, on occasion, the effect of a work written by two different composers. The stylistic dislocation is, however, nowhere near as extreme as that between the 'old' and 'new formula' Wagner in the Paris version of Tannhauser, and had Sardanapale been completed it would certainly have constituted a remarkable fusion of avant-garde Germanic harmonic procedures with Italianate melodic types. One can only speculate as to what effect this would have had on the Italian opera genre as a whole, a genre hardly noted for its harmonic adventurousness. Overall, the Sardanapale music is fluent, imaginative and replete with good tunes. What survives of the libretto is rather less impressive.

If we are seeking a reason for the opera's abandonment, the libretto seems a likely culprit. It is stilted, wooden and remarkably old fashioned for 1850. Some of it would not be out of place in Metastasio. As Liszt continued working on the music, he must surely have become more and more painfully aware of its shortcomings, shortcomings that his own inept suggestions had only exacerbated. His growing involvement with opera production in the Weimar theatre would have given him more insight into the requirements of a successful opera, and the risk to his reputation as a composer of an operatic catastrophe. Moreover, his new mistress, the Princess Wittgenstein, did not support Sardanapale, seeing it as a reminder of his friendship with a dangerously seductive 'other woman' and believing Liszt's future to lie in symphonic writing. Liszt's overwhelming admiration for the operatic genius of his friend Wagner was perhaps the final nail in the coffin. Quite simply, he preferred to compete in other areas.

Thus it was that Liszt's grand designs for Sardanapale met their end, not with some great theatrical triumph or disaster, but slinking silently into the wings, unfinished, unsung. Few operas could have had so many projected dates of completion or

57



58 The death of Liszt's Sardanapale

venues of production. Ironically, perhaps the best way to bring Sardanapale before the public is in a Lisztian piano fantasy, for one thing the surviving music does not lack is good tunes. As it happens, I myself have been talking about writing one for at least three years. In another two it should be about time to get started on the music.

