SYNOPSIS

Spoiler Alert | Detailed Synopsis (2026 Korean Non-Replica Production)

Luigi Lucheni assassinated Empress Elisabeth of Austria and later died by hanging himself in prison. In the world of the dead, he is questioned again about a murder committed a hundred years ago. Lucheni complains that he is still being put on trial even though he is already dead. He argues that Elisabeth wanted death throughout her life and that he merely gave her what she wanted. To prove his point, he summons the dead from her time. Elisabeth’s story begins.

As a girl, Elisabeth is lively and carefree. She wants to live freely like her father. One day, she falls while playing on a suspended rope and meets the supernatural figure of Death (Der Tod) for the first time. Death falls in love with her and tries to lure her into his world. Elisabeth chooses life instead. Death sees her choice as a rejection and continues to pursue her throughout her life.

Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria falls for Elisabeth instead of her older sister Helene, whom his mother Sophie had chosen for him. Elisabeth is happy to marry the man she loves. Life at court, however, is nothing like she expected. Sophie disapproves of Elisabeth and uses court education as a reason to control her. Even activities Elisabeth enjoys, such as horseback riding, become a problem. Elisabeth asks her husband for help, but Franz Joseph tells her to follow his mother’s rules for the sake of the imperial family.

Elisabeth increasingly sees the palace as a cage. She demands the freedom to control her own life. Sophie takes charge of her children and keeps them away from her, and the death of Elisabeth’s daughter deepens the conflict. Elisabeth locks herself in her room and forces Franz Joseph to choose between his mother and his wife. Death appears again and asks her to come with him. Elisabeth refuses. She intends to live and win her freedom on her own. Franz Joseph finally accepts her demands, leaving Sophie defeated.

Meanwhile, the people suffer from food shortages. Lucheni incites the crowd by claiming that there is no milk for them because the Empress uses it for her beauty treatments. Elisabeth does, in fact, spend hours having her hair dressed and bathing in milk as part of an elaborate beauty regimen. She appears in the magnificent image of her famous portrait, no longer the young Empress controlled by Sophie.

In Act II, Franz Joseph and Elisabeth are crowned King and Queen of Hungary to public acclaim. Death approaches her again. Elisabeth now declares that she alone will decide when, where, and how she lives. Yet while she has gained freedom and power, her young son Rudolf grows up largely without her care. Alone in bed, he sings for his mother to come and hold him. Death appears and tells Rudolf that he can be his friend. Rudolf asks him not to leave. Death promises that they will meet again.

As Elisabeth’s influence grows, Sophie schemes to separate her from Franz Joseph and sends a woman to him. Later, Elisabeth collapses while exercising. Death appears disguised as a doctor and tells her that she has contracted a sexually transmitted disease. Elisabeth sees this as her husband’s betrayal and leaves the palace in anger. Franz Joseph accuses his mother of deliberately driving them apart and effectively breaks with Sophie.

Elisabeth spends years travelling across the empire without settling anywhere. At a psychiatric hospital, she meets a patient who believes that she herself is Empress Elisabeth. Elisabeth envies her. She says that while the woman’s body is confined, her own soul is trapped, and that perhaps only madness or death could set her free. The freedom Elisabeth once believed would make her happy can no longer save her.

As an adult, Rudolf develops political ideals opposed to those of his father. He writes against the imperial establishment and associates with supporters of Hungarian independence. When Death returns, Rudolf recognizes the presence he first encountered as a child. Franz Joseph discovers Rudolf’s political activities, and their conflict erupts. Desperate, Rudolf seeks out his travelling mother and asks for her help. Elisabeth refuses. She has already freed herself from Franz Joseph and the court and does not want to return.

Rejected even by his mother, Rudolf encounters Death again. Death gives him a gun and guides the gun in Rudolf’s hand toward his head. As Death kisses him, Rudolf takes his own life.

Rudolf’s death devastates Elisabeth. She regrets that she failed to care for her son and now begs Death to take her. Death, who has wanted Elisabeth for most of her life, mocks her and refuses. Elisabeth continues to wander in permanent mourning. Franz Joseph asks her to return and live with him again, but she tells him that it is too late.

Deaths continue around Elisabeth, including those of her sister, brother-in-law, and cousin. Death’s shadow draws ever closer. In a vision, Franz Joseph witnesses the collapse of the Habsburg dynasty. He sees Death throw a weapon to Lucheni but is powerless to stop him.

Lucheni originally intends to assassinate the Duke of Orléans. When the Duke fails to appear, he looks for another target. Lucheni tells the audience that the newspapers were kind enough to report Elisabeth’s visit, so he chooses her instead. By the lakeside in Geneva, he passes Elisabeth almost casually and stabs her, inflicting a fatal wound.

Death finally appears before the dying Elisabeth. He descends toward her from above along a slope. This time, Elisabeth does not reject him. They kiss, and the strength leaves her body.

Elisabeth remains above with Death as a noose descends below. Lucheni places his own neck in the noose. Elisabeth and Death above and Lucheni below are left under separate spotlights. The stage goes dark.


REVIEW

The musical Elisabeth combines the life of Empress Elisabeth of Austria with the personified figure of Death (Der Tod). Compressing several decades of her life and the history of the Habsburg dynasty into two acts inevitably requires selection. This Korean non-replica production reduces the political and dynastic context and places the relationships between Elisabeth, Death, Franz Joseph, Sophie, and Rudolf at the center.

The two qualities most strongly associated with Elisabeth throughout the show are freedom and beauty. Young Elisabeth is a cheerful girl who wants to live freely, but after her marriage, the palace becomes a place of confinement as Sophie controls her in the name of court education.

The conflict with Sophie focuses heavily on the upbringing of Elisabeth’s children. Elisabeth fights to regain control over them, eventually giving Franz Joseph an ultimatum to choose between his mother and his wife. She gets what she wants. Yet in Act II, young Rudolf grows up lonely and largely without his mother’s care, and Death steps into the space she has left behind. Even allowing for the compression of several decades, Elisabeth’s fierce struggle over her children and her later absence as a mother appear too close together on stage. If the earlier conflict had focused more on Elisabeth’s own freedom and autonomy at court rather than on child-rearing, her later relationship with Rudolf might have felt more consistent.

By the end of Act I, Elisabeth is no longer the young Empress controlled by Sophie. She appears in a magnificent image reminiscent of her famous portrait, and beauty is presented almost as a new form of power. Lucheni repeatedly voices the public fascination with her appearance, wondering how long she can remain beautiful and remarking on how little she seems to have changed after twenty years.

In Act II, Elisabeth has gained freedom and power, but neither makes her happy. After an incident she interprets as her husband’s betrayal, she leaves the palace, and much of her later life is presented as wandering and loss. At a psychiatric hospital, she meets a patient who believes herself to be Empress Elisabeth and actually envies her. Elisabeth says that while the woman’s body is confined, her own soul is trapped. The paradox of a woman who fights for freedom, gains it, and still cannot escape herself is one of the more interesting aspects of this production.

There is, however, a considerable gap between the historical Elisabeth and the character presented on stage. The musical focuses on a woman isolated at court who gains freedom, enjoys beauty and power for a time, and then falls into prolonged grief after a series of personal losses. The history of the Habsburg dynasty and the empire largely recedes behind her personal story.

Death is an interesting symbolic character, but his motivation did not feel entirely convincing in this production. When Elisabeth first encounters him, she is not suffering or longing for death. She is a lively and happy girl. Death falls in love with her and sees her decision to live as a betrayal, following her for decades. It works as melodrama, but the connection lacks a certain inevitability.

One interesting moment comes after Elisabeth leaves the palace, when she calls on Heinrich Heine for help. This seemed to connect Elisabeth’s poetic inner life and thoughts of death with the personified Death of the musical. More historical connections of this kind, together with the deaths of her children and relatives and earlier signs of the decline of the Habsburg dynasty, might have made Death feel less like a persistent lover and more like the personification of the mortality and tragedy surrounding Elisabeth and her dynasty.

Franz Joseph eventually sees the collapse of the Habsburg dynasty in a vision, but until then the historical crisis of the dynasty remains relatively distant. For much of the show, the imperial family appears wealthy, the people suffer, and the empire still seems powerful. The result feels more like a melodrama about Elisabeth’s love, freedom, and loss than a historical drama about the final decades of the Habsburg dynasty.

Franz Joseph is also presented less as a historical ruler than as a husband who loves Elisabeth throughout his life. He does worry about the survival of the state and empire, but his central conflict is his inability to take a clear position between Sophie and Elisabeth until he has already begun to lose his wife. His imperial authority makes him rigid, but his devotion to Elisabeth remains constant.

Lucheni, meanwhile, seemed less like an anarchist and more like a merchant who profits from propaganda and gossip. He spreads stories about the imperial family, agitates the public, and then sells products based on Elisabeth. Rather than standing with the people, he appears to exploit their discontent. His motivation also becomes somewhat ambiguous when Death gives him the weapon used to kill Elisabeth. In the prologue, Lucheni insists that he merely gave Elisabeth what she wanted, but his political position and his motive for the assassination are not fully connected.

Rudolf’s political story shows similar signs of compression. His opposition to his father and his association with Hungarian anti-imperialists create a clear theatrical conflict, but the path by which a future emperor comes to actively undermine the system he is expected to inherit is not fully developed. His emotional story is more convincing. He grows up isolated from his parents, turns to Death as a child, and eventually accepts Death after his mother refuses his final request for help.

The stage design was good. Three fan-shaped structures at the front opened and closed like curtains, changing the size and shape of the performance space. The floor consisted of a few concentric revolves, with the central circle and surrounding annular sections able to move independently. Some sections could also rise to different levels. When Elisabeth travels through different parts of Hungary, rotation and changes in height are used to suggest movement through both place and time.

The revolve was used so frequently that it eventually became somewhat repetitive. There were, however, some inventive uses of it. In one scene, a curtain shaped like the silhouettes of women in dresses descended while an annular section revolved behind openings in the skirts. It turned a familiar stage mechanism into a distinctive visual image.

Vertical space was also used extensively, with a central lift, a large descending frame containing an image of the Empress, and a sloping moving structure that brings Death down from above. The rear LED screen showed Austrian landscapes, a burning castle, the lakeside, and other locations in a near-photorealistic style and at high resolution. The images had enough depth to create a convincing sense of perspective. The elaborate costumes also suited the imperial setting.

Blue Square has had consistently good sound in the productions I have seen there recently, and this performance was no exception. The voices and orchestra were clear. Near the end, thunder was accompanied by powerful low frequencies that filled the entire theatre, with the vibration clearly reaching the audience.

The music by Sylvester Levay and Michael Kunze remains one of the show’s greatest strengths. Many of the numbers are strong enough to be frequently performed in actors’ concerts, and this cast served the score well.

Lee Jisoo as Elisabeth suited this role better than when I previously saw her in West Side Story and The Great Comet. Both her singing and acting were excellent. She moved naturally across the long span from a carefree young girl to a glamorous Empress and finally to an exhausted and grieving woman.

Ko Eun-sung used a noticeably different vocal tone from the one I had heard from him before. It was almost as if he had put a character filter over his voice, adding a slight metallic edge and roughness. The firm texture suited Death well, and his bleached hair also helped create the image of a figure who does not quite belong to the human world.

Noh Yun said during the preview curtain speech that he had been nervous, but he appeared comfortable on stage. His expressions had the right degree of slyness, his movement was natural, and his singing had the rough, direct quality of a rock singer. It suited Lucheni, who constantly addresses the audience and moves between the other characters’ stories.

Min Young-ki as Franz Joseph was as reliable as expected. I had not expected Franz Joseph to have quite as much singing as he does, so it was particularly enjoyable to hear more of Min’s voice.

JuA portrayed Sophie’s transition from an imposing Archduchess to an aging woman losing her power very well. She also reflected that change vocally, gradually using a heavier tone and slower vibrato as the character aged.

Kim Woo Seong appeared in the ensemble earlier in the show, which made me smile when I noticed him, but his later appearance as Rudolf had a completely different atmosphere. Rudolf does not have many numbers, but “Die Schatten werden länger – Reprise” gives him a strong musical moment. More importantly, Kim’s acting was excellent. Rudolf’s growing desperation was visible from his political isolation and rejection by his parents through to his death.

The young Rudolf also sang very well, and the ensemble was strong and cohesive throughout.

This production of Elisabeth simplifies the historical complexity of its subject in order to make the emotional relationships clearer. The story is easier to follow as a result, but the symbolic role of Death and the political motivations of Lucheni and Rudolf also become weaker. With Elisabeth and Death taking precedence over the decline of the Habsburg dynasty, the production feels more like a melodrama than a historical drama.

The music, cast, stage design, and costumes were much stronger. Levay and Kunze’s score was well served by a strong cast, and the production offered plenty to look at despite relying too heavily on the revolve. I came away remembering the music, performances, and staging more strongly than the narrative itself.