Word: gounod
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...Royal Opera, was invited to La Scala. In the course of singing about Europe and at the Met, he has picked up over 70 operatic roles, many of the non-Italian wing, including Grigori in Boris Godunov, Tamino in The Magic Flute - and most notably the title role in Gounod's Faust. His voice is not par ticularly large, but it is passionate, beau tifully placed, and as finely responsible to the shape of the music as any in opera...
Maria Callas: Great Arias from French Operas (Orchestre National de la Radiodiffusion Française, conducted by Georges Prêtre; Angel). Callas deserts the Italian roles in which she became famous for the heroines of Gluck, Bizet, Gounod, Charpentier. The voice is predictably wobbly in spots, but the interpretations are uniformly superb, suggesting that Callas may still have a new repertory to explore...
Bizet's lushly orchestrated score with its mass choral effects still showed the clear influences of Verdi, Meyerbeer and-particularly-Gounod, whom Bizet considered his master (one 12-bar passage is note-for-note from Gounod's Faust). But under the expert leadership of Conductor Laszlo Halasz, and with a fine lead performance from Tenor Giuseppe Campora, the opera emerged at least in parts as the melodic masterpiece that the French have come to regard it (the Paris Opera-Comique has it in its regular repertory, as does La Scala). Outstanding were the fine tenor aria...
...lighting. The production suffers, however, from a total lack of style, from seeming solidly, even a little clumpingly, echt Deutsch. It may not seem too German for those who know German; for those who do not, Faust is more rewarding in Marlowe's play, or Berlioz' or Gounod's or even Boito's music. But, if not exactly something to see, as a great classic it may yet, perhaps, be something to have seen...
...arched chest of her partner; a delicate tracery of pirouettes executed at stunning speed by the Bolshoi's youngest ballerina, 19-year-old Ekaterina Maximova. Unfortunately, the dancers' technique was more impressive than their material: among the selections was a glass-beaded resurrection of Walpurgis Night, from Gounod's Faust, with the satyrs decked out in yellow wigs that made each a dead ringer for Harpo Marx...