The
pure influence of that mighty master, combined with the strange mingling
of sensuousness and mysticism which was the distinguishing trait of his
own character, produced a musical personality of high intrinsic
interest, and historically of great importance to the development of
music. If not the actual founder of modern French opera, Gounod is at
least the source of its most pronounced characteristics.
His first opera, 'Sapho' (1851), a graceful version of the immortal
story of the Lesbian poetess's love and death, has never been really
popular, but it is interesting as containing the germs of much that
afterwards became characteristic in Gounod's style. In the final scene
of Sappho's suicide, the young composer surpassed himself, and struck a
note of sensuous melancholy which was new to French opera. 'La Nonne
Sanglante' (1854), his next work, was a failure; but in 'Le Medecin
malgre lui' (1858), an operatic version of Moliere's comedy, he scored a
success. This is a charming little work, instinct with a delicate
flavour of antiquity, but lacking in comic power. It has often been
played in England as 'The Mock Doctor.' Sganarelle is a drunken
woodcutter, who is in the habit of beating his wife Martine. She is on
the look-out for a chance of paying him back in his own coin. Two
servants of Geronte, the Croesus of the neighbourhood, appear in search
of a doctor to cure their master's daughter Lucinde, who pretends to be
dumb in order to avoid a marriage she dislikes.
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