Gounod's first opera proclaimed him clearly enough a composer with a future but it must have seemed very doubtful whether that future would lie in the theatre. He chooses a classical subject and deals with it in a formal manner, rather as though constructing a dramatic cantata. Crucial decisions occur in passages of recitative but without sufficient musical highlighting to secure due effect. Clashes of personality are also involved, including a grand scene for the rival women, Sapho and Glycere; but again the score hardly measures up to the situation, the seriousness of which has been undercut by a charming but inappropriate admixture of light opera in the preceding duet for Glycere and Pytheas. Here it is hard to gauge what Gounod thought he was doing. His manner almost anticipates Offenbach or Messager, and it introduces the subtlety of comedy into a rather stiff convetion of tragic set-pieces. The urbane, ineffectual character of Pytheas hardly belongs to the tragic conventional at all: he seems at first to be cast in the role of confidant, but then emerges as an oddly camp figure, cynically observant and ultimately untrustworthy. Phaon, the tenor-hero, gains sympathy but disappears in Act 3 before he has time to reap the rewards. Sapho herself comes to a gratifying end, singing her big aria and then jumping off a precipice, but the catastrophe is not well prepared. Immediately before it comes the delightful song of a shepherd boy, and the effect is rather as though in Act 3 of Tosca Cavaradossi had leapt over the battlements after reciting his poem: understandable in the circumstances, but leaving behind a feeling that something is missing.
Musically, the score bears testimony to Gounod's appreciative work as a student. He has learnt much about the depth that can lie in simplicity from the Mozart of Die Zauberflote, and his orchestration owes something to Berlioz. The classical tradition of Gluck and Cherubini lends dignity which supports him when he decides to risk a more populist element such as the suggestion of a Marseillaise-tune in Alcee's Ode to Liberty. Gounod's own gift for a more frank emotional utterance gains outlet from time to time, most of all in Sapho's final aria, the famous ''O ma lyre immortelle''. The lighter touch which was to contribute to the success of Faust and Romeo et Juliette is felt in the cortege of athletes and then in the chorus of youths acclaiming the poet Alcee; and a genuine talent for music-drama is exercised in the Quartet of Act 1 where each character has an independent part, making effective counterpoint in dramatic as well as musical terms.
Unfortunately, the recording, though it comes live from a radio production and has an enthusiastic audience, well behaved enough to reveal its presence only at the very end of the performance, lacks any sense of a producing hand or a dramatic conviction. Nor is the general level of the singing better than acceptable. Vanzo is always heard with gratitude, and the gentle melancholy of Phaon's aria ''O jours heureux' suits him admirably. The high baritone of Alain Meunier has freedom but not the resonance to make Alcee's call to arms effective. The unsympathetic character of Glycere is sung by an unsympathetic soprano so perhaps one should not grumble (but I do). Sapho herself is a challenging role, in the capable hands of Katherine Ciesinski, an American-born Geneva prize-winner with a growing reputation in Paris. Her tone is well defined but not sumptuous; her expressiveness is adequate but not compelling. Cambreling's conducting does justice to the breadth and dignity of the score, perhaps less to its energy. The recorded sound is clear, marginally preferable on CD, which also has the advantage of interrupting the unfolding drama only once as compared with the six sides of the LP set.'