Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Gounod's Faust

2018; Music Library Association; Volume: 75; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/not.2018.0089

1534-150X

Sean M. Parr,

Historical and Literary Analyses

Gounod's Faust Sean M. Parr Charles Gounod. Faust: Opéra en cinq actes (Version opéra). Édition de Paul Prévost. Volume 1: Actes I–III. (L'opéra français.) Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2016. [Foreword in Fre., Eng., Ger., p. vii–viii; introd. in Fre., Eng., Ger., p. ix–lxiv; libretto, p. lxv–lxxxviii; table des morceaux, p. lxxxix–xci; score, p. 1–348. ISMN 979-0-006-53794-5; pub. no. BA 8713-01. €1128 inclusive of both vols.] Charles Gounod. Faust: Opéra en cinq actes (Version opéra). Édition de Paul Prévost. Volume 2: Actes IV–V. (L'opéra français.) Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2016. [Table des morceaux, p. vii–ix; score, p. 349–700; appendix, p. 701–734; crit. report in Fre., p.735–954; facsims., p. 955–962. ISMN 979-0-006-53794-5; pub. no. BA 8713-01. €1128 inclusive of both vols.] One of the most important and popular nineteenth-century French operas, Charles Gounod's Faust was also the most commonly performed repertory opera in Paris from its premiere in 1859 into the early twentieth century. Faust was also performed frequently throughout France, and in translation in Italy, England, and Germany. In Germany, the opera was titled Margarete in order to distance Gounod's work from Goethe's play—the opera was only a loose and partial re-setting of the play, which was still in circulation at the time. Gounod's adaptation of part 1 of Goethe's work for his opera originated in sketches the composer wrote while in Italy during his Prix de Rome (1839–1842), when he encountered Gérard de Nerval's 1827 French translation of the play. But Gounod did not truly embark on his full operatic conception of Faust until 1855 when he met librettists Jules Barbier and Michel Carré. Carré's three-act play Faust et Marguerite (1850) served as the basis for the libretto of Gounod's Faust. Léon Carvalho, impresario and director, accepted Gounod's opera for production at the Théâtre-Lyrique in Paris. In many ways the Gounod operas created at this theater are inextricably linked to Carvalho and his more famous wife, Caroline Carvalho—superstar coloratura soprano, and one of the most important créatrices of the nineteenth century—a figure who held such sway that she was sometimes called the Théâtre-Lyrique's "directrice." (Gounod wrote Marguerite in Faust with her in mind, as well as the title roles in Mireille and Roméo et Juliette, and composed waltz ariette showpieces for these roles at her request.) [End Page 142] Gounod's Faust was performed 306 times at the Théâtre-Lyrique from 1859 to 1868, and five hundred times at the Paris Opéra between 1869 and 1887. As Paul Prévost explains in the introduction to his beautifully produced critical edition of Gounod's Faust, the work exhibits qualities that place its genre in between the worlds of grand opera and opéra-comique. Certainly the opera's scope, serious subject, moral tone, and concluding choral apotheosis place it in the domain of grand opera. But Gounod's Faust also includes many moments of lightness, humor, and irony, perhaps especially in the presence of demi-caractère roles such as Marthe and Méphistophélès. Most conspicuously, the original version performed at the Théâtre-Lyrique included spoken dialogue. Prévost's edition is based not on this original version, but on the 1869 revision, a stabilization of the work prepared for its 3 March premiere at the Opéra, and one that included recitatives in place of spoken dialogue. Prévost deems this version the third edition of the work, one that followed a first version which was substantially cut and altered in collaboration with Léon Carvalho before the first performance at the Théâtre-Lyrique and a second version which served as the basis for Faust's creation at the same theater. Interestingly, Gounod himself wanted both the second and third versions to be available separately (as Prévost has admirably followed), writing (about Roméo et Juliette): "It seems to me that the insertion of...