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Budapest Hungary is cheap is you stay in the villages outside of Budapest. Travel is cheap too. Slovakia is cheaper. Both these places are really nice in the summer. Last summer I travelled to Hungary, Slovakia and Austria. Austria is very expensive.

Elisabeth (musical)

Elisabeth is a Viennese, German-language musical commissioned by the Vereinigte Bühnen Wien (VBW), with book/lyrics by Michael Kunze and music by Sylvester Levay.

The show opens somewhere in purgatory, where Luigi Lucheni is being interrogated by a celestial Judge as to why he has murdered the Empress Elisabeth, a continuous punishment for his deed that has lasted for over one hundred years. Lucheni claims that he was coerced to murder Elisabeth by the Emrpess herself and her lover. He tells the Judge that all her life, Elisabeth was the mistress of none other than Death itself. As his witnesses, Lucheni brings back the dead aristocracy of the bygone era and takes us to the past, where he serves as a bitter sarcastic narrator of the events that lead to the transformation of the sweet and innocent Sisi to the revered and infamous Elisabeth, Empress of Austria and Hungary.

The "Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves", (Va Pensiero), from Verdi's opera Nabucco (1842) attained great political significance. Va Pensiero became the Italians' song of liberation, for, in the oppressed Hebrews, they found a symbol of their own longing for reunification with Lombardy, which was occupied by Austria. The unison chorus (one of the few da capo choruses in all opera) became the underground "national hymn". And the composer's name became V.E.R.D.I, a slogan meaning Vittorio Emmanuale Rei de

Italia ("Victor Emmanual, King of Italy") - a reference to the sole native dynasty in Italy and the focus of nationalist hopes for unity.