Oscar Commettant, in one of his works, gives the following satirical
sketch of Liszt in the height of his popularity in the Parisian concert
rooms:
"A certain great pianist, who is as clever a manager as he is an
admirable executant, pays women at a rate of 25 frs. per concert to
pretend to faint away with pleasure in the middle of a fantasia taken at
such a rapid pace that it would have been humanly impossible to finish
it. The pianist abruptly left his instrument to rush to the assistance
of the poor fainting lady, while everybody in the room believed that,
but for that accident, the prodigious pianist would have completed the
greatest of miracles. It happened one night that a woman paid to faint
forgot her cue and fell fast asleep. The pianist was performing Weber's
Concertstueck. Reckoning on the fainting of this female to interrupt the
finale of the piece, he took it in an impossible time. What could he do
in such a perplexing cause? Stumble and trip like a vulgar pianist, or
pretend to be stopped by a defective memory? No; he simply played the
part which the faintress (excuse the word) ought to have acted, and
fainted away himself. People crowded around the pianist, who had become
doubly phenomenal through his electric execution, and his frail and
susceptible organization. They carried him out into the greenroom. The
men applauded as if they meant to bring down the ceiling; the women
waved their handkerchiefs to manifest their enthusiasm, and the
faintress, on waking, fainted, perhaps really, with despair of not
having pretended to faint."