"Faust" may be considered as an important landmark in French music, and from the year 1859 may be said to have sprung up an entirely new generation of composers, imbued with a high and noble ideal, and differing in many essentials from their predecessors. Previous to this the voice of Berlioz remained that of one crying in the desert, unheeded and scoffed at. The author of the "Symphonie Fantastique" had come too soon, and, moreover, was altogether too thorough in his ideas and devoid of any spirit of compromise. The pen of the critic, which he wielded with such a conspicuous amount of success, was too often dipped in gall, and the shafts of sarcasm which he unremittingly hurled at his enemies kept their rancour alive, and mayhap did something to prevent even a moderate amount of fair criticism from being meted to his musical compositions. Although not a reformer in the same sense, Gounod nevertheless contrived, in a quieter and less obtrusive manner, to impose certain innovations without offending the prejudices of the partisans of the older style of operatic music. To us nowadays it seems difficult to realise that an opera so full of melody as "Faust" should have seemed at all unduly complicated, but so it appears to have been thought, and the Parisians of thirty years ago concentrated their admiration upon the lighter portions, and looked askance at the rest. These same Parisians were destined two years later to show the measure of their musical aptitudes by the disgraceful manner in which they received Wagner's "Tannhaüser" on the occasion of the memorable performances of this work at the Opéra in 1861. At that period Gounod was professedly an admirer of the German master, although since then his opinions seem to have become sensibly modified. It is necessary to remember that Wagner was only known then as the author of "Tannhaüser" and "Lohengrin," and as holding certain heterodox views upon dramatic art. After the _fiasco_ of "Tannhaüser" Gounod appealed to the detractors of the master, and gave them _rendezvous_ in ten years' time before the same work and the same man, when, he said, they would lift their hats to them both. It has required somewhat more than ten years for this, but the Parisians have gone even further now than Gounod, and possibly the popularity of Wagner in Paris may eventually equal, if it does not surpass, that of the composer of "Faust." Within a year after the production of this last work, a new opera by Gounod was brought out at the Théâtre Lyrique. "Philémon et Baucis," played for the first time on February 18th, 1860, is a graceful and delicate little score, that has remained popular in France and only recently has obtained a fair measure of success in London, where it was produced by Sir Augustus Harris at Covent Garden in 1891.