Gounod's 'Faust'

Synopsis

The opening of Edith Wharton’s novel, The Age of Innocence, takes place at New York’s old Academy of Music in the early 1870s, during a performance of Gounod’s Faust, a French opera based on a German play by Goethe. At the time specified in Wharton’s novel, Gounod’s opera was still “new” music, having premiered about a dozen years earlier in Paris on today’s date in 1859.

Gounod’s Faust became a worldwide success, and was quickly translated into many languages. In Wharton’s fictional New York performance, for example, the real-life Swedish diva Christine Nilsson sang the role of Marguerite, the German maiden seduced and abandoned by Faust. As Wharton put it: “She sang, of course, ‘m’ama!” and not “he loves me,’ since an unalterable and unquestioned law of the musical world required that the German text of French operas sung by Swedish artists should be translated into Italian for the clearer understanding of English-speaking audiences.”

Nilsson, again singing in Italian, sang Marguerite at the 1883 gala opening night performance of Faust at New York’s newly built Metropolitan Opera House. Faust was performed so often there that the building was soon dubbed the “Faust-spielhaus,” a pun on Wagner’s “Festpielhaus” or “Festival Theater” in Bayreuth.

Music Played in Today's Program

Charles Gounod (1818-1893): Faust Ballet Music; St. Martin’s Academy; Neville Marriner, conductor; Philips 462 125

On This Day

Births

• 1872 - Russian ballet impresario Sergei Diaghilev (Gregorian date: Mar. 31)

• 1873 - German composer Max Reger, in Brand (near Bayreuth)

• 1907 - English composer (of Irish descent) Elizabeth Maconchy, in Broxbourne

• 1929 - American composer Robert Muczynski, in Chicago

Premieres

• 1859 - Gounod: opera Faust, in Paris at the Théâtre-Lyrique

• 1864 - Gounod: opera Mireille, in Paris at the Théâtre-Lyrique

• 1870 - Gomes: opera Il Guarany (The Guarani), in Milan at the Teatro alla Scala

• 1892 - Tchaikovsky: The Nutcracker Suite, in St. Petersburg (Julian date: Mar. 7); The first staged performance of the complete Nutcracker Ballet occurred later that same year in St. Petersburg on Dec. 6 (Julian)/Dec. 18 (Gregorian)

• 1896 - Dvořák: Cello Concerto, at London’s Queens Hall by the London Philharmonic conducted by the composer, with Leo Stern as soloist

• 1910 - Bartók: String Quartet No. 1, in Budapest, by the Waldbauer Quartet

• 1915 - John Alden Carpenter: Adventures in a Perambulator, by the Chicago Symphony, Frederick Stock conducting

• 1919 - Gabriel Fauré: Fantasie for piano and Orchestra, at a Société Nationale de Musique concert at the Salle Gaveau in Paris, with Alfred Cortot as the soloist

• 1944 - Tippett: oratorio, A Child of Our Time, in London

• 1972 - George Perle: Sonata Quasi una Fantasia for clarinet and piano, in Buffalo, New York

• 1991 - John Adams: opera The Death of Klinghoffer, in Brussels at the Théatre Royal de la Monnaie

• 1998 - Robert X. Rodriguez: Sinfonia a la Mariachi, by the San Antonio Symphony, Christopher Wilkins conducting

Others

• 1931 - American premiere of Alban Berg’s opera Wozzeck in Philadelphia, with Leopold Stokowski conducting.