When Gounod brought his “Faust” to London five years after its world premiere in 1859, there was one devil lurking in the details: venerated baritone Charles Santley was singing Valentin—the soldier brother of Marguerite who is killed by his sister’s lover (and the work’s title character)—but despite his fame he had no aria to sing. Gounod pulled a melody from the work’s prelude, and spun it into “Even Bravest Heart.” This aria was later translated into the opera’s original French as “Avant de Quitter ces Lieux” (“Before Leaving this Place”). It’s an aria my grandfather and I loved so much that I wound up getting the eponymous phrase tattooed on my right shoulder as a tribute to him shortly before his death.
Before Leaving this Place
The life and loss of Dmitri Hvorostovsky
