3-017-214 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Franz Liszt conducting the performance of his new oratorio at Pesth, 1865. 'The jubilee of the Royal Conservatory of Music at Pesth, which took place on the 15th August, was celebrated with great éclat by the first performance of a new oratorio, or religious opera, composed by the famous pianist Franz Liszt, who on this occasion left the seclusion of his monastic life at Rome, and reappeared once more in public as the conductor of the orchestra in executing his work. The title of this composition is "The Legend of St. Elizabeth," and its subject is the history of that Princess, a daughter of King Andreas II. of Hungary...M. Otto Roquette...[is the] author of the libretto to which the music of Liszt is adapted...The Illustration we have engraved, from a sketch by M. Bartolomeus de Szekely, an Hungarian artist, shows the composer, dressed in the frock of his monastic order, in the act of wielding the conductor's baton on this occasion, surrounded by the members of the orchestra and vocalists of the Pesth-Ofen Conservatory, with a numerous and fashionable audience'. From "Illustrated London News", 1865.