★★★★☆
Born 200 years ago this month, the quintessential French Romantic composer Charles Gounod had a strong if complex relationship with England. Fleeing the Paris Commune, he spent four years in London, during which time he founded the Royal Choral Society and had a torrid affair with his host’s wife, not necessarily in that order.
He also made a delightfully melodious job of setting Shakespeare’s tragedy of star-crossed lovers. You can pour scorn on musical devices that sound corny to modern ears: the little violin whimpers as Mercutio dies, for instance, or the shuddering diminished seventh chord as Frère Laurent produces the fateful sleeping potion. Three decades earlier, the same story drew far more original orchestra treatment from Berlioz, while in the next century Prokofiev