Journal of the Royal Musical Association ISSN: 0269-0403 (Print) 1471-6933 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rrma20 An Uncrossable Rubicon: Liszt’s Sardanapalo Revisited David Trippett To cite this article: David Trippett (2018) An Uncrossable Rubicon: Liszt’s Sardanapalo Revisited, Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 143:2, 361-432, DOI: 10.1080/02690403.2018.1507120 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/02690403.2018.1507120 © 2018 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. Published online: 05 Oct 2018. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 190 View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rrma20 Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 2018 Vol. 143, No. 2, 361–432, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02690403.2018.1507120 An Uncrossable Rubicon: Liszt’s Sardanapalo Revisited DAVID TRIPPETT Liszt and opera Liszt’s brief career as an operatic composer is rarely taken seriously today. Despite a battery of operatic transcriptions and a storied variation set on Bellini’s ‘Suoni la tromba’ (I puritani), his only completed opera, Don Sanche (1825), is typically classed as an unsuccessful juvenile work of dubious authorship.1 All other planned operas of the 1840s and 1850s remained the embryos of ambition, including Richard of Palestine (Walter Scott), Le corsaire (Byron/Dumas), Consuelo (George Sand), Jankó (Karl Beck), Spartacus (Oscar Wolff), Marguerite (Goethe),2 Divina commedia (Dante/Autran), Email:
[email protected] While preparing this article I have accrued a number of debts.