Word: agoult
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Most laymen think of Liszt as a saintly white-haired old man who crowned a rich musical life by dedicating himself to God. Critic Newman thinks differently, takes sides with Countess Marie d'Agoult who sacrificed a proud position, bore Liszt three children and saw him truly as a superficial showman so dependent on adulation that he could never adjust himself to solitude and concentrated work. Liszt kept his shallow ways even after he turned to the Church. He repented periodically but he reverted always to the spotlight, to flatterers who kissed his hand, cherished his cigar butts, begged...
Young Franz's first serious love affair was with Marie Catherine, Countess d'Agoult, a beauteous unmusical mother of three, whose elderly husband bored her. The year was 1833. She was 28, he, 22. They ran away to Geneva, spent eleven years of romantic vagabondage interrupted only by his concert tours. She bore him three illegitimate children of whom Cosima (named after Lake Como) was to achieve fame by deserting her devoted husband to marry his dearest friend, Richard Wagner...
Although Liszt was at work on some of his best compositions before 1847 most of his time was devoted to piano recitals. Everywhere but in England, which disapproved of Countess d'Agoult, he was an idol. Women wore his portrait on cameos, went wild over him, He was the first, the greatest of pianists. He was making approximately $60,000 a year, owned 60 waistcoats, 360 cravats...
...left Countess d'Agoult and met her successor, the cigar-smoking Princess Carolyne Sayn-Wittgenstein. Although love affairs continued to play through his life like tarantellas, she remained his nominal mistress until his death. Only a last minute refusal from Rome to grant her a divorce prevented their marriage...