On today’s date in 1841, Franz Liszt performed a solo piano recital at the Academy of Song in Berlin. Liszt was already considered one of the greatest composer-performers of his time, and so, when he arrived in Berlin, was greeted by three of his distinguished composer-colleagues: Mendelssohn, Meyerbeer, and Spontini.

For his Berlin recital, Liszt played, among other works, his own solo piano arrangements of the overture to Rossini’s opera “William Tell,” a medley of tunes he’d arranged from Meyerbeer’s opera “Robert, the Devil,” and this virtuoso arrangement of the Schubert song “The Erl King.”

Now, Liszt had played these same pieces in England the previous year, but they hadn’t really gone over very well with the reserved British audiences. But in Berlin, for some inexplicable reason, the audience just went nuts. No one had ever seen anything like it, in fact.

The German poet Heinrich Heine even coined a special term for it: “Lisztomania.” Women began wearing Liszt’s portrait on brooches and cameos. The composer was attacked by fans desperate for clippings of his hair; his cast-off cigar butts and coffee-dregs were collected as precious souvenirs; piano strings that Liszt broke at concerts were retrieved and made into bracelets for his fans.

The madness swept Europe, and so, long before the Beatles and Michael Jackson, Franz Liszt, composer and pianist had become “Franz Liszt—Superstar!”