Despite all the attention we justly devote to the great orchestral and piano works of the 19th century, opera dominated the world of music in those days, and few composers could resist its allure. Liszt was no exception. For his subject, he chose Sardanapalus, a decadent king in ancient Assyria, whose colorful story had been told in verse by Lord Byron. Berlioz had already written an oratorio on the death of Sardanapalus, but Liszt aimed to create an opera, with a French libretto by the distinguished playwright and novelist J.P.F. Mallefille (1813–1868).

Unfortunately, Mallefille proved to be painfully slow in his work, and by the time of the letter displayed here, Liszt had lost patience and was ready to abandon the collaboration. While acknowl­edging that Mallefille was “a great genius and a great man,” Liszt launched into a tirade against his librettist, saying that “I must finally make a decisive stand and renounce the idea of associating my humble name with his much vaunted but tardy glory.” He complains that he had fallen into Malle­fille’s trap, and that “it is obvious that our Shakespeare cannot or will not come up with a suitable scenario for Sardanapalus. Well, others will manage it better and certainly quicker than he.” Liszt reports that he was already starting to make arrangements with another librettist for an opera about the Crusades.

As it turned out, the Crusader opera never came to fruition either. The following year Liszt did in fact obtain another libretto for Sardanapalus (this time in Italian), but he did nothing with it for several years. In the early 1850s he composed a significant amount of music, but he never finished it. One wonders if the tardy Mallefille felt vindicated by Liszt’s own tardiness.

Liszt’s only completed opera, Don Sanche, was a product of his precocious youth. Composed with the assistance of his teacher Ferdinando Paër, it was performed at the prestigious Paris Opéra in 1825, shortly before his fourteenth birthday.