Sardanapalo
[4] (His early one-act opera, Don Sanche, composed aged 13, closed after four performances at the Paris Opéra, and could hardly qualify to raise his status.)
[7] In correspondence with his close associate the Princess Belgiojoso, Liszt first planned to have the opera performed in Milan in 1846–47, later switching the venue to the Kärntnertor Theater in Vienna (1847), and finally to "Paris or London" (1852).
Liszt had been present at the second performance in 1830 of the oratorio The Death of Sardanapalus by Hector Berlioz, which featured an immolation scene, in preparation for which a "sacrifice of the innocents" took place, as famously depicted in Eugène Delacroix's sensational 1828 painting of the subject (illustration).
With reference to the inferno that ends Byron's play, he tells Belgiojoso that his finale will "aim to set the entire audience alight".
[9] By 1849, when he at last began to write the music, he conceived the idea of further altering the libretto by adding an orgy scene, perhaps after Delacroix, but this was turned down by Belgiojoso.
In December 1846, Liszt sent his assistant, Gaetano Belloni, to Paris with orders 'to bring me back, dead or alive, a poem [libretto]'; he managed to deliver the first act, in Italian, on New Year's Day 1847.
[12] Between April 1850 and December 1851 Liszt notated 110 pages of music (now in the Goethe- und Schiller-Archiv in Weimar, and digitised in 2019) and wrote to Richard Wagner that the opera would be ready for production in Paris or London in 1852.
The women, undeterred, encourage her to enjoy her position as the King's favourite and embrace a life of ‘boundless ecstasy’ enraptured by ‘angelic kisses’.
Awakening from the dream, she remonstrates at being torn in two directions (‘a slave, alone, plaything of fate’): she loves the King deeply, yet is ridden with guilt, for it was he who conquered and destroyed her homeland.
While a majority of his subjects don't respect him (owing to his effeminate, non-brutal ways), she closes the scene with a virtuosic cabaletta that celebrates the sincerity of her love for him (‘my heart was blessed with indescribable contentment’).
A band of rebel Satraps are readying forces against the empire, and Beleso invokes the ancient kings of Assyria in disgust (‘witness the error of your successor, forgetting the sceptre for a base slave mistress’) before urging the king to fight: ‘set aside the distaff, grasp the sword!’ Sardanapalo hesitates, fearing that violence leads only to the suffering of innocents (‘every glory is a lie, if it must be bought with the weeping of afflicted humankind’).
A closing trio sees the king growing more contented as military ruler, Mirra praising his new noble demeanour, and Beleso beating the drums of war as the army mobiles and begins to march into battle.
[15] But in 2016, musicologist David Trippett discovered that the music and libretto are both decipherable and continuous, constituting the first act of Liszt's planned three-act opera.
Joyce El-Khoury (Mirra), Airam Hernández (King Sardanapalo), Oleksandr Pushniak (Beleso) Weimar Staatskapelle, conducted by Kirill Karabits.
... A most special and historic release"[21] Gramophone awarded it 'Editor's Choice' declaring it: "immensely important ... the act is beautifully shaped, while Liszt's fluid treatment of bel canto structures reveals an assured musical dramatist at work.
"[22] For The Guardian it was "a lost opera of glittering scope,"[23] The Sunday Times (Album of the week) spoke of "rip-roaring stuff, characteristic of the dramatic orchestral narratives of the composer's neglected tone poems,"[24] and Opera Now (Critics Choice) declared it "lush and Romantic to a fault, with long-spun melodies, an innate sense of dramatic thrust and some thrilling choral work.
[26] Bachtrack wrote of "an entirely convincing drama, packed with incident and bursting with thrilling vocal and orchestral colour – think Bellini reimagined by Wagner and you have some idea of the vast emotional sweep of this gripping music.
