Unsung Gounod, sung on dvd at last

Started by edurban, Sunday 23 January 2011, 17:35

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edurban

The Paris Opera raised eyebrows two years ago by opening their season with a very traditional production of Gounod's Mireille, once famous, now languishing.  It was a tremendous hit, with an audience for the tv broadcast of over a million.  Now the production is out on dvd, as well as cd, but the dvd is the thing here, since few of us will ever see this opera staged, and certainly not in a staging Gounod might have approved.
The NY Times went to Paris to review it:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/23/arts/23iht-loomis.html
Here's the item itself.  Naturally it's also available in Region 2:
http://www.amazon.com/Mireille-Mula/dp/B003Z420MY/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1295803092&sr=8-2
A well-reviewed cast, with a Albanian Mireille and an American Vincent! 
David

eschiss1

Unsung Gounod makes me think of his chamber music- how many string quartets did he write, six (the A minor's received a few recordings, three of the others one each, two of the six maybe none at all)? Are his violin sonatas all recorded? That sort of thing. (... violin sonatas- thinking of Godard, not Gounod. But yes, six string quartets by Gounod... in C major, A major, F major (these three, and the quartet in A minor from 1895, recorded by the Quatuor Danel on two different CDs); also i think two others- though not sure. One of the other two- I believe- is Gounod's opus 37 (but that might be the A major just listed) published as quartet no.2 in 1884, I think...)
Anyhow. sorry :)

TerraEpon

Gounod also wrote a bunch of incidental music,  a genre where even sung composers tend to get shafted outside a few overly sung pieces.