* December 24 – At the start of the Holy Year, Charles Gounod's Inno e Marcia Pontificale is adopted as the new papal anthem.

( French composer Charles Gounod was also a guest at this reception, and he and Edison discussed the prospect of recording a performance of Gounod's opera Faust, but a collaboration never materialized.

The most popular earlier work based on the legend was Gounod's opera Faust, which Boito regarded as a superficial and frivolous treatment of a profound subject.

This work was first performed in its entirety in the church of St Eustache in Paris on Saint Cecilia's Day, 22 November 1855 ; from this rendition dates Gounod's fame as a noteworthy composer.

His Symphony No. 1 in D major was the inspiration for the Symphony in C, composed later that year by Georges Bizet, who was then Gounod's 17-year-old student.

Some musicologists believe that the ballet in Gounod's Faust was actually composed by Delibes.

The cornerstone was laid at 30 Lafayette Avenue in 1906 and a series of opening events were held in the fall of 1908 culminating with a grand gala evening featuring Geraldine Farrar and Enrico Caruso in a Metropolitan Opera production of Charles Gounod's Faust.

At that time, Antonio Allegra ( 1905 – 1969 ), who was then one of the organists of St. Peter's Basilica, wrote Italian lyrics for Gounod's music.

After further study in Central City ( where he was in the chorus of Don Giovanni in 1963, with Norman Treigle in the title role ) and as an apprentice with the Santa Fe Opera, he went to New York where he worked for an academic publisher before he had his first breakthrough at the New York City Opera, debuting on March 11, 1973 singing the role of Zuniga in the 1875 Bizet opera Carmen, after which, among other roles, he took over the Faustian devils in Gounod's Faust and Boito's Mefistofele left empty by the early death of Treigle.

" The same critic reviewed Faust: " From where I sit at the opera, Jeanette MacDonald has turned out to be one of the welcome surprises of the season ... her Marguerite was better than her Juliet ... beautifully sung with purity of line and tone, a good trill, and a Gallic inflection that understood Gounod's phrasing .... You felt if Faust must sell his soul to the devil, at least this time he got his money's worth.

The convention was beginning to die out with Siebel, the ingenuous youth in Charles Gounod's Faust ( 1859 ) and the gypsy boy Beppe in Mascagni's L ' Amico Fritz, so that Offenbach gave the role of Cupid to a real boy in Orphée aux Enfers.

Once the 1862-63 season was over, Santley paid a visit to Paris and saw Mme Carvalho perform in Gounod's Faust, which Mapleson had obtained for the 1863 season in London.

After this her performance career slowed down somewhat and her last performance at the Met was on February 17, 1986 as Gertrude in Gounod's Roméo et Juliette with Neil Shicoff as Roméo and Catherine Malfitano as Juliette.

Gounod's opera Faust had become popular at the Théâtre Lyrique since its premiere in 1859 ( it was performed over 300 times between 1859 and 1868 ) and this led to a further commission from the director Carvalho.

His final and 462nd performance at the Met was on 15 May 1950 conducting Charles Gounod's Faust with Giuseppe Di Stefano in the title role, Nadine Conner as Marguerite, Luben Vichey as Méphistophélès, and Robert Merrill as Valentin.

Occasional literary references point to the novel and, naturally the classics and we know of family visits especially with Madame Pisani ( of whom he appears to have been extraordinarily fond ) " to view the paintings " He was, presumably, culturally no different to any other highly educated European gentleman. Invitations are to be found among the papers in the Royal Irish Academy-to M. Gounod's " Sappho ", first performed in Paris in 1851, Verdi's " Rigoletto " Il Trovatore ", " La Traviata and Les Vespres Siciliennes ", Schumann's " Manfred "; Donizetti's " Lucia di Lammermoor " and Berlioz ' " The Infant Christ ". Such advanced musical tastes and opportunities usually come early in life and by were presumably instilled in Hortense and Henry by the Pisani's rather than by Haliday's provincial and decidedly dour family. It is worth noting, but no more, that Giacomo Puccini, the Italian opera composer, was born in Lucca, Haliday's other home town in 1859.

His French signature parts were considered to be Meyerbeer's three big tenor heroes ( Vasco, Jean and Raoul ), Gounod's Faust and Romeo, and the title role in Massenet's Le Cid ( which was written expressly for him ).

This company had staged the first performances of Gounod's Faust and his Roméo et Juliette, and of a shortened version of Berlioz's Les Troyens.

Schwarzkopf's association with the Milanese house in the early 1950s gave her the opportunity to sing certain roles on stage for the only time in her career: Mélisande in Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande, Jole in Handel's Eracle, Marguerite in Gounod's Faust, Elsa in Wagner's Lohengrin, as well as her first Marschallin in Richard Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier and her first Fiordiligi in Mozart's Così fan tutte at the Piccola Scala.

She also sang her first Marguerite in Gounod's Faust with Chicago Lyric Opera and sang the role of Donna Anna in Mozart's Don Giovanni with the Paris Opera at the reopening of the Palais Garnier with Sir Georg Solti.

In 1964, Milnes made his first major breakthrough singing the role of Valentin in Gounod's Faust at the New York City Opera ( opposite Norman Treigle as Mephisto ), the role with which he also made his Metropolitan Opera debut in 1965.

O ' Mara gave many private concerts at the beginning of the new century, but happily returned to opera as leading tenor with the Moody-Manners Opera Company in London from 1902 to 1908, performing in Maritana, Cavalleria, Faust, Lohengrin, Pagliacci, Il trovatore, Carmen, Charles Gounod's Roméo et Juliette, and the first English-language production of Puccini's Madame Butterfly ( 1907 ), also performing extensively in Ireland with the company.

He performed the role of Daland in the first performance of The Flying Dutchman in England in 1870, and sang in the first performance of Gounod's La Rédemption in 1882.

Chorley wrote the English libretto for Gounod's Faust, for its first presentation in London in 1863 ( at Her Majesty's Theatre ).

Further performances in New York included four appearances as Valentine ( a role she also performed on tour in Louisville, Albany, Brooklyn, Philadelphia, and Boston ), three as Donna Elvira in Mozart's Don Giovanni, three as Eva in Wagner's Die Meistersinger, one more as Gilda, one as Desdemona, one as Elsa, as well as a single appearance as Marguerite in Gounod's Faust.

Among the notable roles that Abbott sang with the company are Juliette in Gounod's Roméo et Juliette, Virginia in Paul et Virginie, Josephine in H. M. S. Pinafore, the title role in Flotow's Martha, Amina in Bellini's La Sonnambula, and Violetta in La Traviata, a role which she apparently no longer objected to, however, instead of singing Addio del passato, she made Violeta expire with Nearer, my God, to Thee.

Edith Wharton's novel The Age of Innocence ( 1920 ) opens with a description of a performance of Gounod's Faust at the Academy of Music in New York City in the early 1870s with Nilsson performing the role of Marguerite.

On 15 July 1884 in London she sang the role of Brunehild in Ernest Reyer's opera Sigurd and the role of Juliette in Gounod's Roméo et Juliette in the same season.

In her early career she won considerable success in bel canto roles such as Lucia di Lammermoor, ( Gilda ) in Rigoletto, ( Elvira ) in I Puritani, and the title role in Linda di Chamounix, and lighter lyric roles such as Massenet's (" Manon ") and ( Marguerite ) in Gounod's Faust.

Caballé closed out the year with her Metropolitan Opera debut on December 22, 1965, portraying Marguerite in Gounod's Faust opposite John Alexander in the title role and Justino Díaz as Méphistophélès.

In 1957, Gedda made his Metropolitan Opera début in the title role of Gounod's Faust, and went on to sing 28 roles there over the next 26 years, including the world premieres of Barber's Vanessa and Menotti's The Last Savage.

Highlights of recent seasons have included Kiri Te Kanawa in the title role of Samuel Barber's Vanessa ; Charles Gounod's Roméo et Juliette ; Leoš Janáček's Jenůfa starring Karita Mattila ; Kurt Weill's Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny starring Anthony Dean Griffey, Audra McDonald and Patti LuPone.

The company's 2011 – 2012 season included a revival of Gounod's Romeo et Juliette, conducted by Plácido Domingo and starring Nino Machaidze and Vittorio Grigolo ; Britten's Albert Herring conducted by Conlon and starring Alek Shrader in the title role, with Janis Kelly and Christine Brewer sharing the role of Lady Billows.

Labatt's repertoire included: Vasco da Gama in Meyerbeer's The African Maid, the title role in Gounod's Faust, Eleazar in Halévy's The Jewess, and the title roles in Richard Wagner's Tannhäuser and Rienzi.

Farrar created a sensation at the Berlin Hofoper with her debut as Marguerite in Charles Gounod's Faust in 1901 and remained with the company for three years, during which time she continued her studies with famed German soprano Lilli Lehmann.

( Similar examples during the 19th century include Charles Gounod's opera Faust and Delibes's ballet Coppélia.

In a more complex situation, A la maniere de ... Emmanuel Chabrier / Paraphrase sur un air de Gounod (" Faust IIème acte "), Ravel takes on a theme from Gounod's Faust and arranges it in the style of Chabrier.

In 1855 he wrote an ambitious overture for a large orchestra, and prepared four-hand piano versions of two of Gounod's works: the opera La nonne sanglante and the Symphony in D. Bizet's work on the Gounod symphony inspired him, shortly after his seventeenth birthday, to write his own symphony, which bore a close resemblance to Gounod's — note for note in some passages.

She also appeared in the Metropolitan Opera's inaugural performance on October 22, 1883 in Gounod's Faust.

Henry Abbey served as manager for the inaugural season 1883-1884 which opened with a performance of Charles Gounod's Faust on October 22, 1883 starring the brilliant Swedish soprano Christina Nilsson.

Those works are in the vein of similar compositions written at the time in other Nations, such as Charles Gounod's Fantasy on the Russian National Anthem.

He made his US debut in Gounod's Faust in 1963 at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, and he went on to sing twelve roles with the company, including the title roles in Boris Godunov, Don Quichotte, and Mefistofele.

Hergé also gave him tiny cameo roles in Tintin adventures, sometimes under the name Jacobini, for example in The Calculus Affair where Jacobini is the name of an opera singer advertised as starring alongside La Castafiore in Gounod's Faust, and as a mummified egyptologist on the cover of Cigars of the Pharaoh, as well as in the rewritten version.

During his years in Dresden, Tauber acquired his reputation as a remarkably quick study: he learned Gounod's Faust in 48 hours, Bacchus in Richard Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos in an afternoon, and so on.