Maurice Benyovszky - Legacy

Legacy

In addition to authoring a late 18th century bestseller, Benyovszky has inspired other established writers, poets, and composers. The opera Benyowsky and the exiles of Kamchatka, by François-Adrien Boïeldieu, was presented in Paris in 1800. The US premiere of the play Count Benyowsky — The Conspiracy of Kamchatka, a tragi-comedy in five acts by the German playwright August Friedrich von Kotzebue, took place in Baltimore, accompanied by with the first performance of the United States national anthem, the Star Spangled Banner, on 19 October 1814. The second of eight operas by the Austrian composer Albert Franz Doppler (1821–1883), later arranged for piano by the Hungarian composer Mihaly Mosonyi, is called Benyovszky. Beniowski is also the name of an epic poem by the Polish poet Juliusz Słowacki (1809–1849) and of a historical novel by Polish writer Wacław Sieroszewski.. A Slovak novel entitled The Adventures of Móric Benyovszky by Jozef Nižňanský (1933) and a 1975 Czechslovak-Hungarian television series called Vivat Benyovszky likewise depict the story of Benyovszky.

Benyovszky's name has survived in Madagascar to the present day. The island opposite Cape East is called the Benyowsky Island on older maps, and on the way from Antalaha to Cape East there is a ford named Baron Passage, relating to Benyovszky's first stay on the island. A street in the capital of Madagascar at Antananarivo, Rue Benyovski, is named after him, as are streets in several other cities.