Gounod Gear - UK

 Charles Gounod Fun Facts: 

• winner of the Prix de Rome, the prestigious French prize which gave a residency in Italy. Ravel tried five times to win. (What does this say about competitions?)

• he hung out with Mendelssohn, whose deep relationship with Bach's music rubbed off on Gounod. (We all live in the house that Bach built).

• Gounod conceived of his Ave Maria setting on the Bach Prelude No. 1 from the Well-Tempered Clavier as an improvisation. 

• his Petite Symphonie for winds which premiered with the eminent flutist Paul Taffanel, was a favorite piece in the wind chamber music workshops of Taffanel's famous pupil Marcel Moyse. 

• his most famous work, the opera Faust, opened the first performance of the Metropolitan Opera in New York in 1883 (That must have been a night to remember!)

• his career had its highs and lows but in the scope of things his music lives on as permanent masterworks in the concert halls of the great metropoles.

Bring the names of the great composers out into the world!