A Liszt speciality at the International Opera Festival in Miskolc

Liszt’s only opera premiered at the Salle Le Peletier of the Paris Opéra on 17 October 1825, a few days before Liszt’s fourteenth birthday. The child prodigy known as “petit Litz” had already brought down the house and returned to the French capital from his first concert tour in England. After composing about a dozen piano pieces he won an opera contest with Don Sanche based on a knight novel so fashionable in his time.

The opera presents an all-day story for us, in frames of a knight tale. The magician Alidor builds the Castle of Love, which can only be entered by couples who truly love each other.  The main role Don Sanche’s love for his dame, princess Elzire is unrequited, so he cannot enter the castle. Elzire is an ambitious lady aiming as high as a royal scion for her husband. The good Alidor feels pity for the distressed knight, and after a series of ordeals, the young couple are united and are allowed to enter the Castle of Love.

Though this opera may be considered an insignificant piece written at a tender age – throughout his composing life Liszt behaved as though the work did not exist – Don Sanche is as brilliant as Mozart’s pieces written at the same age. The aria Aimer aime (To love) is extremely charming, dynamic and elaborate. It is interesting to note that in his years in Weimar Liszt drafted several operas, but finally (Maybe because of the overwhelming influence of the Wagner operas?) Don Sanche remained his only piece composed for stage. For many years the score of Don Sanche was thought to be lost, and it was accidentally discovered in Palais Garnier, the library of the Paris Opéra. However, to score has not been published after its first modern performance in 1977, either. The Lisztomania Festival of Burgenland in cooperation with the production in Miskolc will hopefully stop this gap during the Liszt Year.

The joint production of the International Opera Festival in Miskolc, the Bayreuth Festival and Hungarofest (organizer of the Liszt programs in Hungary) will be premiered on 11 June. (Don Sanche was staged by the National Theatre in Szeged. It was conducted by Tamás Pál, who had made the first recording of the piece for Hungaroton in 1997.) The scoring bearing the marks of Ferdinand Paër, Liszt’s music teacher in Paris and the recitatives were prepared by the Austrian composer Gerhard Krammer for the performance in Miskolc and the prospective publication.

The performance will feature the Miskolc Symphony Orchestra and the choir of the Kosice State Theatre; director: Julia Glass; conductor: Nicolaus Richter. Artistic supervision: Katharina Wagner, who did not assume the tasks of directing the piece, as in the period of rehearsals she was busy staging a new production of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. On 8 July Don Sanche will be performed in Bayreuth, too.