About the work
A musical by Michael Kunze (book, lyrics) and Sylvester Levay (music) about the life of the Austrian empress Elisabeth. Vereinigte Bühnen Wien premiered the work on 3 September 1992 at the Theater an der Wien, directed by Harry Kupfer.
Plot
Told in flashback from the afterlife, the young Elisabeth experiences the rigid conventions of the Viennese court, her marriage to Emperor Franz Joseph and the death of her son Rudolf. Death, personified as a seducer and adversary, accompanies her throughout her life until her assassination in Geneva in 1898.
Cultural significance
Elisabeth is among the most successful German-language musicals and has since been restaged in about a dozen countries and languages, including a 1996 production in Japan, the first Vereinigte Bühnen Wien production abroad.