Brief Analysis About The Music Composition Of The French Lyric Opera Faust Of The Nineteenth Century

Charles-Francois Gounod is a famous French composer during the Romantic Period. Faust is primary a poetic drama written by Goethe, and it is truly the result of Goethe’s lifelong speculation and artistic exploration. Based on some parts of the Goethe’s Faust, Goethe not only brings new life for the lyric opera during that period, but also gives creative inspiration to the opera’s style of the Romantic Period. During the Romantic Period, opera themes mainly revolve around "love" and "death" and other related topics. However, C. Gounod’s opera tends to focus on the exploration towards the ambition, pursuit, and creation in one’s life and conflicts of desires. The story of Faust is not straightforward in the sense of philosophy. Instead, the Faust is able to lead the public to deeply think and reflect, via presenting the complicated emotional entanglement between the characters in the play.This paper will introduce and analyze the creating background, characteristics and content of C. Gounod’s Faust. Combining with the author’s own practical experience, this paper will focus on the analysis of the aria of "Salut! Demeure Chaste et Pure" played by Faust. From my own perspective, I have done abundant research on C.Gounod and the poetic drama Faust written by Goethe. Through the deep researching and analysis on the composer C. Gounod and the opera Faust, the author of this paper, who is a lyric tenor, has established a more comprehensive understanding of C. Gounod and his opera Faust. Furthermore, through the continuous study on C. Gounod and his works, it allows the author of this paper to have a more accurate grasp of the musical techniques while performing the aria in the play.