Assassinated in Geneva in front of the Beau-Rivage Hotel by Italian anarchist Luigi Luccheni, Elisabeth, née Wittelsbach, born in Bavaria, first cousin of King Ludwig II, wife of Franz Josef, Empress of Austria, Queen of Hungary, remains a loveable, fascinating character, but not well-known, despite the films that give her a sugar-coated image. 

A friend of the people, artists and poets, she wanders through the world, a female Hamlet, an empress of solitude and incomprehension. Her attraction to the world of madmen is in part hereditary and in part due to a daily reality that is absurd and constraining to the point of inhumanity: the court of the Hapsburgs.

Is Sylvie Guillem Sissi the Empress or a sick woman who in her folly believes herself to be a persecuted sovereign?

Poem read on stage by Sylvie Guillem:
“DAS LIED DER MIGNON”
(1st strophe)

Kennst du das Land, wo die Zitronen blühn,
Im dunkeln Laub die Gold-Orangen glühn,
Ein sanfter Wind vom blauen Himmel weht,
Die Myrte still und hoch des Lorbeer steht,
Kennst du es wohl?
Dahin ! Dahin
Möcht'ich mit Dir, o mein Geliebter, ziehn!

This poem is taken from “Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre” by J. W. Goethe.
(1st part, 3rd book)