Sapho

The story concerns the beautiful Sapho, an artist's model of a certain age and notorious life, whose real name is Fanny Legrand. She begins an affair with a young man, Jean Gaussin, but the relationship, as is so often the case in opera, is ill-fated. A fancy ball at Caoudal's studio Jean Gaussin is a shy and unsophisticated young man from Provence, who has come to Paris to study. At a costume ball given by the sculptor Caoudal, amid the noisy dance music and the mad whirl, the confused Gaussin withdraws and sings of his native country, in a broad and expressive cantabile, one of the few aria-like passages that the opera contains. Fanny, whose fancy is captured by this young man, so strangely different from her friends, promptly makes his acquaintance, and, as the guests are shouting for her to come to supper, takes him away with her. Rooms of Jean Gaussin Jean Gaussin is in his lodgings, where his parents are installing him as a student. He sings a song, "O Magali, ma tant amado", based on a traditional melody, which Gounod had already used in Mireille. It reappears later and adds a bit of Provençal local colour to the piece. Other than this song and a fragment of his aria from the first act, all is conversation in music, rapid and free declamation over a continually varied orchestral accompaniment. Gaussin's father and mother and Irène, a "jeune fille," adopted by them, and evidently destined as the wife for Jean, say "good-bye". No sooner are they out the door than Fanny c…

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