United States or New Zealand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Some of them even mine are at times brought out, smelt, turned over, and looked at, but as I have hinted, none, not even those by Gounod, Dvorak, and Cowen, have become standing dishes in constant request at musical feasts. Speaking generally, many splendid compositions seem to have missed fire through sheer bad luck.
The melodrama at the Porte Saint-Martin turned out to be a failure in spite of its beautiful pictures, and Carvalho recurred to the opera, which had been laid aside, and Gounod had it ready by July. He read it to the director in the greenroom of the theatre in that month, and Mme.
Henry Chorley in his "Thirty Years' Musical Recollections," writing of the year 1851, says: "To a few hearers, since then grown into a European public, neither the warmest welcome nor the most bleak indifference could alter the conviction that among the composers who have appeared during the last twenty-five years, M. Gounod was the most promising one, as showing the greatest combination of sterling science, beauty of idea, freshness of fancy, and individuality.
This island, laid waste now and turned into a slum, was covered then with venerable trees, and intersected by those "shady paths" sung by Gounod, in which we loved to lose ourselves in all the carelessness of our childhood, and perhaps too in the first awakening instincts of our youth. Nothing but a memory remains of that enchanting spot.
But the fact remained that Cavalleria Rusticana flourished at the Opera Comique, and Pagliacci at the Opera: Massenet and Gounod were more frequently performed than anybody else, and the musical trinity Mignon, Les Huguenots, and Faust had safely crossed the bar of the thousandth performance. But these were only trivial accidents: there was no need to go and see them.
Gounod has, in part, applied this principle in "Faust." All opera-goers will remember the intense dramatic effect arising from the recurrence of the same exquisite lyric outburst from the lips of Marguerite. The peculiar character of Wagner's word-drama next arouses critical interest and attention. The composer is his own poet, and his creative genius shines no less here than in the world of tone.
Smith, expressed their youthful feelings of anticipation and excitement in a processional hymn, whose words dealt with certain ritualistic doctrines in a spirit of serene but rather incompetent piety, and whose tune was remarkable for the Gounod spirit that pervaded its rather love-lorn harmonies. As Mr.
The French librettists, while they emptied the character of much of its poetical contents, nevertheless made it in a sense more gentle, and Gounod refined it still more by breathing an ecstasy into all of its music. It is a sudden, uncontrollable rush of passion to which Marguerite succumbs.
Ambroise Thomas was born at Metz, France, on August 5, 1811, and is therefore by seven years the senior of Charles Gounod. His aptitudes for music were so strong that he learned the notes as quickly as he acquired the letters of the alphabet.
While I listened to this beautiful work, I could not help thinking of the great oratorios which crowned Gounod's musical career so gloriously. Liszt and Gounod differed entirely in their musical temperaments, yet in their oratorios they met on common ground.
Word Of The Day