Faust

Gounod had been thinking of composing a version of Faust since his residence at the Villa Medici in Rome in the 1840s, but it was not until almost twenty years later that one of the most famous scores of French Romanticism was premiered at the Théâtre-Lyrique in Paris (1859). Its debut at the Paris Opéra in 1869 propelled the work into theatres the world over, but numerous modifications were the price of achieving that fame. Between the Faust of 1859 and the version of 1869, some of the spirit had evaporated: the spontaneity in the spoken dialogue and melodrama. Many pieces also disappeared as a result of those changes, including a splendid duet for Marguerite and Valentin and a curious chorus of witches in the Walpurgis Night scene. To discover the original version of Faust is to gain a deeper insight into the French demi-caractère aesthetic that was so specific to Paris in the 1850s. This version of Faust was published by Bru Zane Label as a CD-book in 2019.