Biography
Charles Gounod (1818-1893), born in Paris, was one of the dominant figures in nineteenth-century French opera and the supreme lyrical voice between the grand tradition of Meyerbeer and the later modernism of Debussy. Gounod trained at the Paris Conservatoire, won the Prix de Rome in 1839, and spent formative years in Italy absorbing Palestrina and Italian operatic traditions. His two most enduring works are Faust (1859), adapted from Goethe, and Roméo et Juliette (1867), based on Shakespeare. Earlier operas including Sapho and La Nonne Sanglante have fallen into obscurity. Gounod also composed substantial sacred music including the St Cecilia Mass (1855) and the tiny but ubiquitous Ave Maria, a meditation superimposed on Bach's C major Prelude from the Well-Tempered Clavier. Gounod spent years in London escaping the Franco-Prussian War before returning to Paris, where he died in 1893.
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