Elisabeth herself very soon comes to regret her seemingly "fairy-tale marriage".
Lucheni claims that once Franz Joseph, the Emperor of Austria, picks Elisabeth as his bride – for once opposing his domineering mother Sophie – he begins a chain of events that will eventually topple the Habsburg Empire. As his witnesses, Lucheni brings back the dead aristocracy of the bygone era and takes us to the past, where he serves as a sarcastic narrator of the events that lead to the transformation of the sweet and innocent Sisi to the revered and infamous Elisabeth, Empress of Austria and Queen of Hungary, and her decline through later years until her assassination.Īt a young age, Sisi, grown up in a seemingly sorrowless environment, experiences her first encounter with Death, which launches a love–hate affair that will span her entire life. Lucheni claims that he did no more than what Elisabeth herself wanted, since all her life Elisabeth has been in love with Death himself – and vice versa. The show opens in the "world of the dead", where Luigi Lucheni is being interrogated by a Judge as to why he has murdered the Empress Elisabeth. As of 2023, it has not been staged in English-speaking countries. It has been translated into seven languages and seen by over ten million spectators worldwide, making it the most successful German-language musical of all time. It portrays the life and death of Empress Elisabeth of Austria, also known as "Sisi", wife of Emperor Franz Joseph I, from her engagement and marriage in 1854 to her murder in 1898 at the hands of the Italian anarchist Luigi Lucheni, through the lens of her growing obsession with death, as her marriage and her empire crumble around her at the turn of the century. JSTOR ( September 2018) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message)Įlisabeth is a Viennese, German-language musical commissioned by the Vereinigte Bühnen Wien (VBW), with a book and lyrics by Michael Kunze and music by Sylvester Levay.Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.įind sources: "Elisabeth" musical – news Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. This article needs additional citations for verification.
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