Gounod

Back in the day, the hallmark of any up-and-coming composer was winning the Prix de Rome, the notoriously conservative Conservatoire competition that conferred on the victor a stay at the Villa Medici and an entrée into Parisian musical circles on his – and until Lili Boulanger came along in 1913 it was always a ‘his’ – return.

For all his youthful facility, it took Gounod three tries to carry off top honours, and although Fernand – a triangular romance between a Muslim maid, her lover and her would-be Spanish ‘protector’ – was his winning entry, it’s his previous, bolder (and therefore less likely to please the po-faced adjudicators)...