It should be remembered when discussing the music of Gounod’s Faust that it was first presented with spoken dialogue. It can, therefore, be best understood as a ‘number’ opera with fixed, self-contained musical pieces that were made less conspicuous by the composer’s providing music for the spoken recitatives for the Strasbourg premiere in 1860. Faust is still considered something of a collection of arias and ensembles that can easily be lifted out of the score and performed on their own: Marguerite’s Jewel Song, Faust’s cavatine, “Salut, demeure et chaste pure”, Siebel’s “Faites-lui mes aveux”, Valentin’s “Avant de quitter” and Mephistopheles’ “Le veau d’or” and “Vous que faites l’endormie”, all of which appear in the standard singers’ anthologies. Add to these the choral and instrumental pieces that can also stand independently from theatrical presentation, the Soldiers’ Chorus, the waltz from the Kermesse scene and movements from the ballet.
Gounod was an inheritor of the style of Meyerbeer which had dominated the French opera scene at mid-century but he added to it a gift for melody untouched by any other of his compatriots at the time, at least until Massenet. Marks of his style are elegance, a ‘quiet’ rhythmic motor, lush and brilliant orchestration, not too many harmonic surprises and a gift for theatricality. His music actually parallels all of the hallmarks of the arts active at the time of the Second Empire: grandiosity, sinewy line, an emphasis on brilliant color, a monumental sense of scale and occasionally an overwrought sense of the decorative.
Contrary to the opinion of some, Gounod was not a “Wagnerite” in any true sense. He disdained Wagner’s “endless melody” while at the same time admiring what he thought to be “true” and “beautiful” in his works (see a translation of an interview with Gounod on the subject in the archives of the New York Times, May 25, 1884). More importantly there is no real sense of motivic development in his operas, something that truly marks Wagner as unique.