Don Sanche

On 17 October 1825, at the world premiere of Don Sanche, ou Le château de l'amour at the Paris Opera, the audience applauded unceasingly until the (13-year-old!) composer came out on stage. Despite this resounding success, the production only lasted for a total of four performances at the Grand Opéra, and for 150 years there were no performances of this sole opera of Ferenc Liszt's to survive in its entirety. The reason is a banal one: up until 1903, it was believed that the score had been destroyed in the fire that struck the Parisian opera house. In 1977, a London ensemble presented the work on the stage for the first time, and the first CD recording was made in 1997. During the 2011 Liszt bicentenary, the National Theatre of Szeged undertook to produce Hungary's first fully staged production under the direction of Ferenc Anger, and in that same year the opera was also staged in Miskolc by Katharina Wagner. In this bit of Liszt's juvenilia, the knightly title character waits in vain to be admitted into the castle of love, for only those who are loved in returned may enter the realm of the magician Alidor...

Hungarian-language discussion programme