It was a distinguished audience that listened to the first performance of “Faust” on March 19, 1859.  Auber, Berlioz, Reyer, Jules Janin, Perrin, Emile Ollivier, and many other men who had made their mark in literature, art, or politics sat in the boxes, and full as many more of equal distinction in the stalls.  Among these latter were Delacroix, Vernet, Eugene Giraud, Pasdeloup, Scudo, Heugel, and Jules Levy.  The criticism of the journals which followed was, as usual, a blending of censure and praise.  Berlioz was favorably inclined toward the work, and, with real discrimination, put his finger on the monologue at the close of the third act ("Il m’aime!  Quel trouble en mon coeur”) as the best thing in the score.  Scudo gave expression to what was long the burden of the critical song in Germany; namely, the failure of the authors to grasp the large conception of Goethe’s poem; but, with true Gallic inconsistency, he set down the soldiers’ chorus as a masterpiece.  The garden scene, with its sublimated mood, its ecstasy of feeling, does not seem to have moved him; he thought the third act monotonous and too long.  There was no demand for the score on the part of the French publishers, but at length Choudens was persuaded to adventure 10,000 francs, one-half of an inheritance, in it.  He was at that time an editeur on a small scale, as well as a postal official, and the venture put him on the road to fortune.  For the English rights Gounod is said to have received only forty pounds sterling, and this only after the energetic championship of Chorley, who made the English translation.  The opera was given thirty-seven times at the Theatre Lyrique.  Ten years after its first performance it was revised to fit the schemes of the Grand Opera, and brought forward under the new auspices on March 3, 1869.  Mlle. Christine Nilsson was the new Marguerite.  No opera has since equalled the popularity of “Faust” in Paris.  Twenty-eight years after its first performance, Gounod was privileged to join his friends in a celebration of its 500th representation.  That was in 1887.  Eight years after, the 1000 mark was reached, and the 1250th Parisian representation took place in 1902.

Two years before “Faust” reached London, it was given in Germany, where it still enjoys great popularity, though it is called “Margarethe,” in deference to the manes of Goethe.  Within a few weeks in 1863 the opera had possession of two rival establishments in London.  At Her Majesty’s Theatre it was given for the first time on June 11, and at the Royal Italian Opera on July 2.  On January 23, 1864, it was brought forward in Mr. Chorley’s English version at Her Majesty’s.  The first American representation took place at the Academy of Music, New York, on November 25, 1863, the parts being distributed as follows:  Margherita, Miss Clara Louise Kellogg; Siebel, Miss Henrietta Sulzer; Martha, Miss Fanny Stockton; Faust, Francesco Mazzoleni; Mephistopheles, Hanibal Biachi; Valentine, G. Yppolito; Wagner, D. Coletti.  It was sung in Italian, won immediate popularity, and made money for Max Maretzek, who was at once the manager and the conductor of the company.  Forty years before an English version of Goethe’s tragedy (the first part, of course) had been produced at the Bowery Theatre, with the younger Wallack as Faust and Charles Hill as Mephistopheles.