In any event, the Faust music by Schumann
is a curious, dreary mistake—containing the
smallest amount of melody conceivable, and one
or two of those pedantries which denote a man
to be of low stature, let his school stand ever
so high in the claims of its professors. For
instance, in the setting of the scene where
Margaret questions the "forget-me-not," in
accordance with the pretty old superstition
—a scene not ungracefully rendered by Retzsch,
though Retzsch as a Faust-artist is for the hour
out of fashion—the outcry of chords on the last
phrase, "He loves me not," is crude enough to
befit the prison dreams of the betrayed girl who
had murdered her child. Extravagance and
spasm take the place of gentle melancholy and
misgiving. If Schumann implied by his cruel
modulations that crime was foreseen by the girl
from afar, the mistake in taste, truth, and feeling,
was none the less;—but it may be believed that
no preconception of the kind urged him. It was
merely his way to be gloomy and over-emphatic,
owing to the deficiency of fresh spontaneous
power in expression—a deficiency excused, but
not likely to be amended, by the habits of
opposition and antagonism belonging to the air of
opinion he breathed, and the associates he
preferred. Such a man would have done better to
set the Faust of Lenau, a later, madder German
dramatic poem than even the second Faust of
Goethe.

There is a Faust overture by Wagner: there
is Faust music by Lindpaintner—neither of any
value.

There is an opera by our Bishop on the
legend, and there was a ballet, made some thirty
years ago for London, from a grand French
ballet, La Tentation, in which, by the way, the
talent of Halevy presented itself so favourably
as to lead to his being commissioned to compose
La Juive. There have been many settings of
The King of Thule, and Margaret's melancholy
song at her wheel (who does not know Schubert's
version of the latter?), but only one work
of any great success or extent remains to be
mentioned ere this sketch is closed.

It will be seen that many of these attempts to
deal in music with the most difficult and delicate
of modern dramatic stories have been made by men
of some mark. That one and all of these men have
failed, need surprise no person who considers the
nature of the attempt. For a young composer to
have succeeded in the teeth of all obstacles, and
to have carried the reluctant sympathy of Europe
with him, is a phenomenon as noticeable as most
presenting themselves in the history of Music.
This, however, has been completely accomplished
by M. Charles Gounod, whose Faust has set him
in the place as the opera-composer to whom the
world now first looks; no disrespect to that
wonderful veteran, M. Auber—no treason against
the elaborate and keen-witted M. Meyerbeer—
no scandal against the effective yet coarse
vehemence of Signor Verdi. Twelve years ago, there
were some ten people who fancied that Sapho,
with its lovely elegiac third act, revealed to
them a really original genius. It is merry work
to remember how they were jeered at like so
many "lunacies" (as Sir Hugh Evans might
phrase it); how clumsy thunder and small stinging
pellets were aimed at them. What do such
things matter, save to the owners of the thunderbolt
and the popgun, and the after confusion of
their faces? As a pupil of the Parisian Conservatory
—which establishment has the malady
unknown to our Academy, of really producing fruit
worth having—M. Gounod, a Roman student,
was known as a man of promise to his master
Halevy; and, while passing through Germany, had
attracted the attention of the just and genial
Mendelssohn. After this, some years of opportunity
denied, and of efforts made in vain, had to be worn
through by him—years which either strengthen or
annihilate talent—which may distort, but cannot
destroy genius. In 1851, some sacred music by
him was first brought to hearing, and in London,
at St. Martin's Hall, under the presidence of
Mr. John Hullah;—and later in the same year,
Sapho, his first opera, in Paris, owing to the active
and prescient influence of a great artist. The
reception of these works was in England damnation,
in France faint praise. Nothing daunted, the
composer went on to write choruses for Ulysse, a
dreary classical play by the then much overrated
M. Ponsard—a second opera, La Nonne
Sanglante, to one of the worst dramas in being—
which opera, however, is rich in beautiful and
characteristic music—a third, Le Médecin Malgré
lui, a quaint treatment of Molière's comedy;
and, fourthly, this same inconvenient, unauthorised,
and truly indefensible Faust, which has
been bold enough to attack and to retain
Germany, and to force its way into two of our
English theatres at once—an opera which, like
other things that cannot be cured, must be
endured—an opera simply and seriously the only
opera on the legend which, till now, has gained,
or deserved to gain, universal acceptance. To
make the victory more significant, it should be
added that Faust was originally produced at
the third musical theatre in Paris, with only one
good chance in its favour—that, it is true, a very
good one—a Margaret in Madame Miolan-Carvalho,
not to be surpassed in exquisite musical
skill, delicacy of feeling as an actress, or depth
of expression as an interpreter.

What the permanent fate of M. Gounod's opera
may be in England it is not for us to say. There
is a caprice in publics totally irrespective of real
merit or national consistency. With our public,
two of the best operas ever written, Cherubini's
Les deux Journées, and Spontini's La Vestale,
have no existence. The Germans care little for
Handel—the French know nothing of him. Come
what come may, M. Gounod's Faust exceeds
every other former work on the subject. M.M.
Barbier and Carré, who have arranged the book,
have followed Goethe's play closely, and—to the
intense disgust of some of the German
hyper-pedants have even had the immodesty to use