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Reminiscences of a scandal – reminiscences of La Scala: Liszt's fantasy on Mercadante's Il giuramento

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 August 2008

Kenneth Hamilton
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Extract

[Liszt] was not only a musical genius, but could probably have achieved the heights in another profession too. When a diplomat at the Berlin court once asked him, ‘What would become of you if you suddenly lost your hands?’ he replied composedly: I could still be the world's greatest diplomat’.

Type
Research Article
Information
Cambridge Opera Journal , Volume 5 , Issue 3 , November 1993 , pp. 187 - 198
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

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References

1 Kellermann, Berthold, Erinnerungen: Ein Künstlerleben (Zurich, 1932)Google Scholar; quoted in Williams, Adrian, Portrait of Liszt (Oxford, 1990), 486.Google Scholar

2 Ramann, Lina, Franz Liszt, trans. Cowdery, E. (London, 1882), II, 300–4Google Scholar. The most detailed treatment of the Milanese affair is Suttoni's, Charles, Franz Liszt à Milan, in Revue Musicale Numéro Spéciale Franz Liszt (1987), 177–88.Google Scholar

3 Liszt was mistaken on this last point. The opera in question was actually a revision by Ricci, Luigi of his own Il nuovo Figaro (Parma, 1832)Google Scholar and not a re-working of Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro, as Liszt appears to have thought. See Suttoni, (n. 4), 79 n. 13.Google Scholar We can assume that Liszt was not actually present at La Scala to witness this production.

4 Liszt's account of his stay in Italy, and his friendship with Rossini, and Ricordi, , appears in Lettres d'un bachelierès musique, first published in Revue et gazette musicale de Paris (1838–1839)Google Scholar and later reprinted in Chantavoine, Jean, Franz Liszt: Pages Romantiques (Paris, 1912), 147–240.Google Scholar An English translation will be found in Liszt, Franz, An Artist's Journey, trans. Suttoni, Charles (Chicago, 1989).Google Scholar The ‘La Scala’ article is on pp. 73–85.Google Scholar

5 Much has been written on the vexed question of the authorship of Liszt's literary output. A judicious summary of the problem will be found in Suttoni, (see n. 4), 238–45.Google Scholar There seems to be no justification for Alan Walker's singling out of the ‘La Scala’ piece, in Franz Liszt: The Virtuoso Years, rev. edn (London, 1989), 23Google Scholar, as ‘beyond question the work of d’Agoult’, other than the desire to displace responsibility for what was certainly an ill-advised publication

5 La moda (12 07 1838), 221–4.Google Scholar

7 Gazzetta privilegiata di Milano (1 08 1838), 837.Google Scholar I am grateful to John Whenham for advice on translation.

8 II pirata (17 07 1838), 17–18Google Scholar; Il corriere dei teatri (18 07 1838), 225–8.Google Scholar

9 To try to understand the rather bizarre ‘insult’ that Liszt was a Hungarian masquerading as a Frenchman, we must remember that French was Liszt's preferred language (he spoke no Hungarian). However, as Liszt was obviously proud of his Hungarian origins and made no attempt to conceal them, we can only wonder at the point of this remark.

10 The letter is quoted in fu11 in Ramann, (see n. 2), II, 303Google Scholar and Walker, (see n. 5), 265.Google Scholar

11 Suttoni, (see n. 4), 186.Google Scholar

12 See the present author's The Operatic Fantasies and Transcriptions of Franz Liszt – A Critical Study (diss. Oxford University, 1989), V–VI.Google ScholarIl pirata had, though, been performed in the 1835–6 season at La Scala after Bellini's death.

13 Liszt, , ’La Scala’, quoted from Chantavoine (see n. 4), 185.Google Scholar

14 Liszt, , ’On the Condition of Music in Italy’, quoted from Chantavoine (see n. 4), 272.Google Scholar

15 Göllerich, August, Franz Liszt (Berlin, 1908), 284Google Scholar; Schnapp, , ‘Verschollene Kompositionen Franz Liszts’, in Festschrift für Peter Raabe (Leipzig, 1942), 140.Google Scholar The difficulties of reading Liszt's scrawled holograph probably account for Göllerich's garbled version of the words of ‘Suoni la tromba’.

16 Suttoni, (see n. 4), 186 n. 36.Google Scholar

17 Legány, Deszö, Franz Liszt. Unbekannte Presse und Be rieaus Wien (1822–1886) (Vienna, 1984), 78–9.Google Scholar