Gounod’s Faust: Opera of Redemption

Abstract

Because Charles Gounod's reputation waned drastically in the second half of the nineteenth century, he has been thought by some—if he was thought of at all—to be a composer of mediocrity and qualified competence. He once wrote that Palestrina's music is superb because of the absence of visible means, but Gounod's own compositions have been condemned for abounding in those means: effects that are obvious, external, and unconvincing, along with an impact without subtlety because his supreme artistic motivation was the concept bien ordonne. Such judgment largely stemmed from two causes. First, Gounod has been repeatedly associated with a cote- rie of late nineteenth-century composers—Felicien David, Charles Ambrose Thomas, Ernest Reyer, Edward Lalo, Leo Delibes—who themselves epitomized this less than positive evaluation. Second, since Gounod popularly was—and is—known almost exclusively as the composer of Faust, an opera that saw its two-thousandth Paris production just seventy-five years after its premier performance, he suffered from a familiarity that tended to breed contempt. One historian, however, who has made a conscientious effort to adjudge the essential qualities of Gounod clearly, fairly, and in proper proportion with a perceptive ear and eye on the music it-