Beczala, Pape and others: the triumph of Faust

According to Goethe, Mozart was the only composer who could have appropriately set to music his Faust. One wonders what he might have thought of Gounod’s opera, today the most popular work based on Goethe’s drama. The source of his libretto, Michel Carré’s Faust et Marguerite (1850), a stage adaptation of the first part of Goethe’s text, had been already proposed to Giacomo Meyerbeer as a possible operatic subject. But Meyerbeer, a German native and well acquainted with the original Faust, declined to work on Carré’s trivialization of one of the masterpieces of German literature. Carré’s pièce was turned into a libretto by Jules Barbier, one of the most experienced Parisian librettists of the time, and Gounod’s Faust gained immediate success. Despite its popularity, the score was frequently criticized for turning Goethe’s profound drama…