Given its premiere at La Scala in 1833, Donizetti's Lucrezia Borgia did not reach Paris until the fall of 1840, where Liszt saw it and was moved to compose a grandiose concert fantasy on several of its themes, published in 1841 (or 1842) as Réminiscences de Lucrezia Borgia de Donizetti, which he revised in 1848 and to which he added a second fantasy. Though Liszt identified the material of this second fantasy as "Trio de second acte," it occurs in Act I. His initial Grande fantaisie, only slightly revised, is similarly misleadingly subtitled "Chanson à boire (Orgie)—Duo—Finale," though the composition itself, one of his most ambitious, reworks material from no less than six moments of Donizetti's opera. Even in its 1848 revision, this fantasy catches the young Liszt at his most self-indulgently overloaded, which is to say, his most efflorescently inventive. The oddments he seized upon, while luridly effective in the opera, pale and thin as they are overtaken by gargantuan elaborations in which Liszt's reinvention of piano playing—his "transcendental" technique—pushes the limits of what is humanly possible, even to hypervirtuoso supermen. Comparing Liszt's initial thoughts with his revisions, Busoni—an undisputed pianistic superman—noted, "Apart from the artistic pleasure which they open up for players and musicians, these different versions show the development and perfecting of Liszt's views of the capacities, limits and laws of his instrument and side by side they are a guide to everyone who thinks and strives after those heights which up to now have been only once climbed." A similar observation lends another glimpse of Liszt's growth as a composer—"The ornamental decoration, to which Liszt's majestic mastery of all the possibilities of the pianoforte lends a luxuriant development, is used only in the most rare cases as an end in itself. It is usually employed for characterisation." The Réminiscences de Lucrezia Borgia, in part, if not entirely, are representative of the "rare cases" in which pianistic exuberance takes precedence and which sets the Lucrezia fantasies apart from the greatest of Liszt's operatic thrillers—such as the Réminiscences de Don Juan (after Mozart's Don Giovanni) or the Réminiscences de Norma (after Bellini). In following young Liszt's transformation from a force of nature into a stunningly original master, two of William Blake's Proverbs of Hell are apt—"You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough," and "The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom."

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For the nineteenth century, opera was the primary, central, indispensable entertainment, easily eclipsing the stage, evidenced by the lubricity with which successful plays became operas: Victor Hugo's epoch-making Hernani (1830) transformed into Verdi's Ernani (1843), Hugo's Le Roi s'amuse (1832) into Verdi's Rigoletto (1851), or Hugo's Lucrèce Borgia (1833) into Donizetti's Lucrezia Borgia, which premiered at La Scala on December 26, 1833. Despite the censor's copious objections, enough of Hugo's libel remained in Felice Romani's libretto that Lucrezia Borgia loomed as a horrorshow blockbuster—the Pope's daughter poisoning her son (as well as an entire banquet party), who, it is suggested, is also her lover. Composed in a matter of weeks, Donizetti's score, though uneven, contained some of his most effective music, achieving 33 performances its first season to make a success de scandale. Liszt, an inveterate opera-goer, heard Lucrezia Borgia when it arrived in Paris, at the Théâtre-Italien in the fall of 1840, and was immediately moved to compose a grandiose fantasy on several of its more striking moments under the title "Réminiscences de Lucrezia Borgia," to which he added in 1848 a second fantasy specified as "Trio de second acte," though the number worked over occurs in Act I as Lucrezia pleads with her husband Alfonso for mercy upon her son, about to be put to death (whom Alfonso suspects of being his wife's paramour), as Alfonso pours poisoned wine for the young man. But it is the response of the young Liszt—not yet 30—who has not yet succeeded in matching manner to matter, as the hilarious over-development of the Grande Fantasie symphonique on themes from Berlioz's Lélio for piano and orchestra (1834) and the impossible pianistic over-elaboration of the 12 Grandes Études (1838), the first version of the Études d'execution transcendante (1851), attest. Even in their later, pared-back form the latter are a steep challenge for pianists, and few there are in any generation who can bring all of them off triumphantly. That applies a fortiori to the operatic fantasies of this period, in which Liszt's unrestrained exuberance of invention and pullulating pianistic fantastication of the oddments he has seized upon quite dwarf their original conception. Part of this owes to the search for pianistic equivalents—not bare copies—of the art of the great bel canto singers who gave life to Donizetti's operas, but also to the play of an omnicompetent hypervirtuoso technique that has left all other players toiling in the distance.

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