In his biography of Liszt, Alan Walker noted a Paris performance of Massenet's Le Cid, on March 27, 1886, attended by Liszt and Verdi: "It would be pleasant to record that history was made that evening. Alas, because of other social engagements Liszt's party only arrived in time for the last act, and since the two great composers occupied different boxes they were not introduced; they may not even have seen one another in the darkened theater. This was the closest that they came to making a personal acquaintance." Liszt would die in Bayreuth on July 31. By reflex we think of them trailing clouds of glory, as if their eminence had been fait accompli. Verdi's was, of course, if not entirely free from controversy. Having retired after Aïda in 1870, he was secretly at work on Otello, completed in 1886. But Liszt's reputation was clouded. The pianist was legend and still to be heard at an occasional charity concert, while the plethora of his pupils carried the legend into the twentieth century. Meanwhile, Liszt the composer was widely considered a doubtful case. The sheer variety of his work and—notoriously—his co-optation by Wagner as an apostle of "the music of the future" contributed to a blurring of the public perception of his oeuvre. After seeing his operas furnish material for an incalculable number of potpourris and arrangements by hacks and virtuosi, Verdi was adamant in asserting what we now call intellectual property rights—referring to such productions as plagiarism, even if composed by "List." (One measure of the uneasiness of Liszt's fame was the European penchant for mangling his name.) The high art and stunning pianistic flair Liszt brought to his transcriptions and fantasies were not entirely welcome, either, as they enabled the pianist to upstage their operatic originals. Liszt, on the other hand, began to be aware of Verdi from the late 1840s and followed the unfolding of his art closely into old age—Réminiscences de Boccanegra in 1882 was his final operatic paraphrase. Nor did he take the liberties he had in dealing with music by Mozart, Bellini, or Meyerbeer—his attentions to Verdi are all more or less straight transcriptions seizing upon one central moment from the operas they essay—the quartet in Rigoletto, the "Miserere" in Il Trovatore, or the great crowd scene—interrupted by a procession of monks leading heretics to the stake—in Don Carlos, composed over 1867-1868, soon after its 1866 premiere.

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