Elisabeth (musical)

Elisabeth is a Viennese musical commissioned by the Vereinigte Bühnen Wien and originally produced in German, with a book and lyrics by Michael Kunze and music by Sylvester Levay. It portrays the life and death of Empress Elisabeth of Austria, also known as "Sisi", the wife of Emperor Franz Joseph I, from her engagement and marriage in 1854 to her murder in 1898 at the hands of the Italian anarchist Luigi Lucheni; it focuses on her growing obsession with death, as her marriage and the empire crumble around her just before the turn of the 20th century. According to Vereinigte Bühnen Wien, it has been translated into ten languages and seen by over 12 million spectators in 14 countries, making it the most successful German-language musical of all time.