An Uncrossable Rubicon: Liszt’s Sardanapalo Revisited

Figures & data

Figure 2. Eugène Delacroix, La mort de Sardanapale (1827–8). Musée du Louvre / Wikimedia Commons.

Table 1 operatic settings of the tale of sardanapalus during the nineteenth century

Composer	Librettist	Title	Date of première	Place of première
Giulio Litta	Pietro Rotondi	Sardanapalo	2 Sept. 1844	Teatro Filodrammatici, Milan
Giulio Alary	Emil Pacini	Sardanapale	16 Feb. 1852	Imperial Theatre, St Petersburg
Victorin Joncières	Henry Becque	Sardanapale	8 Feb. 1867	Théâtre Lyrique, Paris
Guiseppe Libani	Carlo d’Ormeville	Sardanapalo	29 Apr. 1880	Teatro Lirico, Rome
Tommaso Benvenuti	Francesca Maria Piave	Sardanapalo^a	unknown	unknown
Alphonse Duvernoy	Pierre Berton	Sardanapale	Dec. 1882	Lamoureux Concerts, Paris

Note: The existence of further settings – by Julius Sulzer, Otto Bach, Moritz Strakosch, Baronnede Maistre and F. C. A. Durette – is postulated in Franz Stieger, Opernlexikon: Titelkatalog, 3 vols. (Tutzing: Hans Schneider, 1975), iii, 1084, where, however, no further details are provided. The earliest known operatic settings of the tale are Giovanni Freschi’s Sardanapalo (Venice, 1679) and Christian Boxberg’s Sardanapal (Ansbach, 1698). Some details of Boxberg’s setting are available in Hans Marsmann, Christian Ludwig Boxberg und seine Oper ‘Sardanapalus’ (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1916).

^a Piave’s autograph libretto and Benvenuti’s autograph score, along with a revised score for an ‘orgy finale to Act 2’, are housed at the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Venice, as VE0049 BENVENUTI 11796-97-98 and VE0049 BENVENUTI 11706. There are no details pertaining to performance.

Figure 3. Assyrian shedu or lamassu, winged bulls who guard gateways, relocated from northern Iraq to museums in London and Paris during the 1850s. Photo © Musée du Louvre, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Thierry Ollivier.

Figure 4. The title page of Pietro Rotondi’s libretto, Sardanapalo (1844). From the Italian Opera Libretto Collection, Music Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. With permission.

Table 2 a timeline for the genesis of liszt’s sardanapale based on actions confirmed in extant correspondence

abbreviations
FL	Franz Liszt
CB	Cristina Belgiojoso
Dec. 1845	FL and CB decide to collaborate on Sardanapalo, to be drafted in French by Félicien Mallefille, and translated and versified by CB.
Feb. 1846	Mallefille misses his first deadline to submit the prose scenario.
21 May 1846	With Mallefille protesting about a misunderstanding and requesting more money, FL expresses misgivings about their collaboration, and accepts CB’s suggestion to procure the libretto from an unnamed Italian poet and political prisoner.
25 Sept. 1846	FL receives the prose scenario from CB’s Italian poet.
6 Oct. 1846	Mallefille misses his second deadline; FL writes to him formally cancelling their arrangement (and pays him off); FL suggests compressing CB’s planned three acts into two.
9 Dec. 1846	Mallefille sends the prose scenario in French, which FL ignores.
1 Jan. 1847	FL confirms receipt of CB’s versified libretto for Act 1.
22 Feb. 1848	FL tells Gaetano Belloni (his secretary) of his intention to seek help from Giovanni Tadolini to complete the Italian libretto.
12 May 1848	CB confirms the versified libretto is finished.
10 Aug. 1848	CB sends the full versified libretto to FL.
15 Jan. 1849	CB tells FL his suggestion for an orgy scene is unrealistic, and implies that further revisions are forthcoming.
11 Apr. 1850	Joachim Raff (FL’s assistant) confirms FL’s composition of the opera is under way.
4 Feb. 1851	FL reasserts in past tense his earlier decision ‘to work actively on the score’.
Dec. 1851	Raff writes to a musical confidante explaining that he anticipates orchestrating the opera soon.

Example 3. Sardanapalo’s monotone recitation, Sardanapalo, bars 967–71. Edition © David Trippett.

Table 3 direct borrowings from byron’s sardanapalus in liszt’s opera libretto

Byron (Sardanapalus, a Tragedy, 1821)	Liszt’s libretto (trans. Rosen)
Sardanapalus: Thou dost forget thee: make me not remember I am a monarch. (p. 11)	Sar: Guai se un tuo detto a rammentar mi forza / [che] re son io.	Sar: Woe betide you if what you say forces me to remember that I am king.
Sar: Oh! If it must be so, and these rash slaves / Will not be ruled with less, I’ll use the sword / Till they shall wish it turn’d into a distaff . (p. 29) Salemenes: They say, thy sceptre’s turn’d to that already. (p. 29)Beleses: I blush that we should owe our lives to such / A king of distaffs! (p. 80)	Bel: Getta [i molli vestimenti], / lascia il fuso, impugna il brando!	Bel: Throw off your soft garments, / Set aside the distaff, grasp the sword![an antithesisrepeated twice elsewhere]
Sar: Thou wouldst have me go / Forth as a conqueror … Sal: Wherefore not? Semiramis – a woman only – led these our Assyrians to the solar shores / Of Ganges.Sar: ’Tis most true. And how return’d? … And how many / Left she behind in India to the vultures? … she had better woven within her palace / Some twenty garments, than with twenty guards / Have fled to Bactria, leaving to the ravens, / And wolves, and men … / Her myriad of fond subjects. Is this glory? / Then let me live in ignominy ever. (pp. 16–17)	Sar: D’una gloria passaggera / non m’illud[e] il facil vanto, / ogni gloria è menzognera / se mercar si dèe col pianto / dell’afflitta umanità.	Sar: I am not deceived by the easy boast / Of a fleeting glory. / Every glory is a lie, / If it must be bought with the weeping / Of afflicted humankind.

Example 5b. Liszt’s 1839 arrangement of Donizetti’s Barcarolle from the collection of arias and nocturnes Nuits d’été à Pausilippe (1836), bars 19–26.

Example 6. Rhythmic modelling in duple-time Italianate march themes from (a) Liszt, (b) Bellini, (c) Donizetti and (d) Wagner.

Table 4 a portion of the libretto from scene iii of sardanapalo, illustrating liszt’s interpolations and decision to ignore the implications of the anonymous poet’s distinction between metrical verse and recitative

Libretto reconstructed by Marco Beghelli, with Francesca Vella and David Rosen. © David Trippett 2018.

Figure 5a. Liszt’s first draft of Tasso: Lamento e trionfo, dated 1847, written in score format playable at the keyboard, and showing instrumentation cues. GSA 60/N5, fol. 28^r. Photo: Klassik Stiftung Weimar.

Figure 5b. The first page of Liszt’s draft for Sardanapalo, c.1850, written in a score format similar to that in Figure 5a, and showing similar instrumentation cues. GSA 60/N4, fol. 2^r. Photo: Klassik Stiftung Weimar.