A fine early full-length photograph of the composer, shown seated at a table beside a partially drawn curtain. The photographer is uncredited but other examples from this series have been credited to Numa Blanc of Paris. This example with an intriguing early inscription on the verso in an unknown hand, "Presented by Liszt to Freiherr W. Wolzogen, Generalintendant der Hof-Oper in Schwerin, by whose son it was given to the Berlin sculptor Arthur Konrad, who transferred it to the Heide Collection." Lower edge trimmed, dark mounting stains to the sides and remnants along the verso upper and lower edges, with block of toning to verso. 2.5 x 4 inches (6.5 x 10 cm).
Alfred von Wolzogen (1823-1883) was a German theatre director and writer. Grand Duke Friedrich Franz II appointed Wolzogen to head the Schwerin court theatre, which he led until it burned down in 1882. Wolzogen lived for less than a year afterwards. He regularly wrote reviews and polemical essays (Über Theater und Musik, 1860) and biographies (Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient, 1862; Rafael Santi, sein Leben und seine Werke, 1865, etc.) and published a volume of Schiller's correspondence (Schillers Beziehungen zu Eltern und Geschwistern und zu der Familie v. Wolzogen, 1858), a history of his family (such as the comedies Geschichte des Reichsfreiherrlich von Wolzogenschen Geschlechts, 1859), political texts, travel literature and minor stage plays (Nur kein Ridicül and Die glückliche Braut, the historical dramas in verse Blanche, Sophia Dorothea and Fürstin Orsini, and the humoresques Die Unke and Lor). He devoted much time and effort to Shakespeare, the great tragedies of Grabbe, and to Bjørnson and Ibsen. With painstaking care, he also staged the music dramas of Richard Wagner.
A fine early full-length photograph of the composer, shown seated at a table beside a partially drawn curtain. The photographer is uncredited but other examples from this series have been credited to Numa Blanc of Paris. This example with an intriguing early inscription on the verso in an unknown hand, "Presented by Liszt to Freiherr W. Wolzogen, Generalintendant der Hof-Oper in Schwerin, by whose son it was given to the Berlin sculptor Arthur Konrad, who transferred it to the Heide Collection." Lower edge trimmed, dark mounting stains to the sides and remnants along the verso upper and lower edges, with block of toning to verso. 2.5 x 4 inches (6.5 x 10 cm).
Alfred von Wolzogen (1823-1883) was a German theatre director and writer. Grand Duke Friedrich Franz II appointed Wolzogen to head the Schwerin court theatre, which he led until it burned down in 1882. Wolzogen lived for less than a year afterwards. He regularly wrote reviews and polemical essays (Über Theater und Musik, 1860) and biographies (Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient, 1862; Rafael Santi, sein Leben und seine Werke, 1865, etc.) and published a volume of Schiller's correspondence (Schillers Beziehungen zu Eltern und Geschwistern und zu der Familie v. Wolzogen, 1858), a history of his family (such as the comedies Geschichte des Reichsfreiherrlich von Wolzogenschen Geschlechts, 1859), political texts, travel literature and minor stage plays (Nur kein Ridicül and Die glückliche Braut, the historical dramas in verse Blanche, Sophia Dorothea and Fürstin Orsini, and the humoresques Die Unke and Lor). He devoted much time and effort to Shakespeare, the great tragedies of Grabbe, and to Bjørnson and Ibsen. With painstaking care, he also staged the music dramas of Richard Wagner.