Autograph Musical Quotation Signed "Ch. Gounod" From The Composer's Opera, Faust Gounod, Charles 1818-1893 Autographs & Manuscripts,New Arrivals

8 measures in treble clef, notated in black ink on a portion of a 14-stave rastrum-ruled album leaf, 177 x 233 mm. With text in French in Gounod's hand commencing "Il etait un Roi du Thulé," Marguerite's melancholy aria from Act III. Identified in the composer's hand at foot: "Ballade du Roi de Thulé . à Monsieur Lebert. Ch. Gounod" and dated 26 August [18]69. Slightly faded; browned; creased at central vertical fold; portions of leaf slighty lightened; margins of verso reinforced with brown paper tape. Faust, an opera in five acts to a libretto by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré after Carré's Faust et Marguerite and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Faust, Part I (in the French translation by Gérard de Nerval), was first performed in Paris at the Théâtre Lyrique on 19 March 1859 in a version with spoken dialogue; recitatives were added in 1860 and a ballet and couplets for Méphistophélès were added for a new production in 1869. "The historical importance of Faust is that it sounded a new note in French music. The conventional pomposities of the grand opera which then dominated the stage were superseded by a more intimate and poetic approach. The fashion Gounod set was one of conversational exchange rather than declamation." James Harding: Gounod, p. 114. "Faust remains one of the landmarks of French 19th-century opera, full of variety and with an underlying sensuality that saved it from the sentimentality and banality to which Gounod's later works (especially his oratorios) often descended in his quest for inspired simplicity." Robert Orledge in Grove Music Online A considerable success at its premiere, the work was one of the most frequently performed works at the Opéra and one the staples of the international repertory.