Elisabeth is a Viennese, German-language musical commissioned by the Vereinigte Bühnen Wien (VBW), with book/lyrics by Michael Kunze and music by Sylvester Levay. Based on the tragic life and death of legendary Austrian Empress, Elisabeth of Austria ("Sisi") wife of Emperor Franz Joseph I. It is narrated from beyond the grave by Luigi Lucheni, the Italian anarchist who assassinated her in 1898. Elisabeth recounts the enthralling tale of her fatal, lifelong love affair with Death, heralding the decline of the Habsburg Empire. Focussing on Elisabeth’s struggle against the stifling constraints of imperial protocol, her determination to assert her own identity, her reaction to the tragic fate of her son, Rudolf, and her morbidly romantic, lifelong love affair with Death–who is here presented as a dashing and darkly charming seducer. For more than three decades now, ELISABETH has been playing in a class of its own: since its world premiere in 1992 at Vienna’s Theater an der Wien, the musical 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.
