Lisztomania

'What is the reason of this phenomenon? The solution of this questions
belongs to the domain of pathology rather than that of aesthetics. A physician,
whose speciality is female diseases, and whom I asked to explain the magic our
Liszt exerted upon the public, smiled in the strangest manner, and at the same
time said all sorts of things about magnetism, galvanism, electricity, of the
contagion of the close hall filled with countless wax lights and several hundred
perfumed and prespiring human beings, of historical epilepsy, of the phenomenon
of tickling, of musical cantherides, and other scabrous things, which, I believe
have reference to the mysteries of the bona dea. Perhaps the solution of the
question is not buried in such adventurous depths, but floats on a very prosaic
surface. It seems to me at times that all this sorcery may be explained by the
fact that no one on earth knows so well how to organize his successes, or rather
their mise en scene, as our Franz Liszt'.

Source - Wikdawg