The National Theatre Košice brings a music-historical rarity to Budapest, a production of the opera which Ferenc Liszt wrote in Paris and which had its premiere exactly two hundred years ago, on 17 October 1825. Long thought to be lost before its rediscovery, Don Sanche, or, The Castle of Love is most reminiscent of the style of the period’s Italian composers. Interestingly, there is barely anything in it that would bring to mind the unmistakable idiom and intonation of the mature Liszt. However, Don Sanche boasts varied and melodious music, an eventful plot and situations that invite many kinds of associations, all of which lend themselves easily to the most diverse directorial concepts. Don Sanche, the title character of the opera, is a knight who is hopelessly in love with a spoiled princess, Elzire. Like a hundred years later in Bartók’s ballet, The Wooden Prince, benevolent supernatural forces must intervene to bring about a happy ending.
As long as he lived, Liszt himself was convinced that his youthful work was destroyed when the music library of the premiering theatre burned down. ‘Since it was nothing,’ he said in 1880, at the age of 69, ‘it became nothing.’