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Charles Gounod.
Particularly significant in the life and creative work by Gounod became the 50s. Notably his attraction to democratic forms of musical life in Paris. This helped the artist to penetrate deeply into intonation and shaped the scope of the French urban songs and romance, which subsequently found a bright implementation in the vocal style of his operas.
Gounod first started in the 50s - "Sappho" (1851), "Bloody Nun" (1854) and "Doctor willy-nilly" (1858) were like, drawings, sketches to the creation of this great canvas - the opera "Faust ".
Appearing in 1859 on the stage of "Lyric Theatre," "Faust," marked the birth of a new genre and direction of the French operatic culture, lyrical opera. Historical and artistic value of "Faust" was not appreciated by the musical circles of Paris. Only ten years after the opera on the stage of «Grand Opera» in considerably reworked form, it is widely accepted, first in France and then throughout the world.
In the second edition of Gounod's conversational dialogues recitatives replaced (similar to that made after the death of Bizet's opera "Carmen" E. Gyro) and added a ballet scene "Walpurgis Night". The first innovation has played a major role in the future of opera, for it has strengthened its drama and helped to deepen the musical characteristics of the majority of actors. The appearance of the ballet scene "Walpurgis Night" was a tribute to the typical age-old traditions of French opera.
Following the "Faust" by Gounod created a number of diverse genre of opera: It is lyrical and comic, "Philemon and Baucis" (1860), comic "Dove" (1860), the opera "The Queen of Sheba" (1862) and the lyric "Mireyl" (1864), which on its artistic merit, much inferior to "Faust"
The latest achievement in the genre of Gounod's lyric opera - "Romeo and Juliet" (1867). This opera have in common with the "Faust" that the two most vividly revealed the lyrical side of the tragedies of Goethe and Shakespeare, and social and philosophical motives recede into the background. |