Gounod's Faust
About This Event
Amore Opera stages Charles Gounod’s Faust at Amore Opera in New York City. Gounod, a 19th-century French composer whose stage works helped define grand opera and lyric drama, favored long-breathed melody and clear vocal architecture; Amore Opera’s fully orchestrated approach foregrounds those vocal lines over orchestral showmanship.
About Faust(opera)
Neil Mackenzie / NZOpera
Charles Gounod’s *Faust* (1859) reworks Goethe’s tale into a five-act French grand opera, centering on a scholar’s bargain with the devil and the collateral damage it leaves in Marguerite’s life. In New York, the piece has long held repertory weight, with the Metropolitan Opera presenting it early in the company’s history and returning to it across eras. At Berlin, Amore Opera frames the story through F. W. Murnau’s silent *Faust*, paired with a newly composed live score by Igor Yachmenov, treating image, movement, and sound as interlocked dramaturgy. One clear takeaway: this material endures because it refuses to separate private desire from public consequence.
About the Artists
Charles Gounod
Charles Gounod was a French composer whose stage works helped define grand opera and lyric drama in the 19th century. His catalogue includes twelve operas, with *Faust* and *Roméo et Juliette* remaining repertory touchstones, alongside a substantial body of sacred music and art song.
Amore Opera
Amore Opera is a New York City opera company that stages fully orchestrated productions of classic operas, making opera accessible to broad audiences.