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