Christoph Willibald (Ritter von) Gluck (1714 – 1787)
was a composer of Italian and French opera in the early
classical period. Born in the Upper Palatinate and
raised in Bohemia, both part of the Holy Roman Empire,
he gained prominence at the Habsburg court at Vienna.
There he brought about the practical reform of opera's
dramaturgical practices for which many intellectuals
had been campaigning. With a series of radical new
works in the 1760s, among them Orfeo ed Euridice and
Alceste, he broke...(+)
Christoph Willibald (Ritter von) Gluck (1714 – 1787)
was a composer of Italian and French opera in the early
classical period. Born in the Upper Palatinate and
raised in Bohemia, both part of the Holy Roman Empire,
he gained prominence at the Habsburg court at Vienna.
There he brought about the practical reform of opera's
dramaturgical practices for which many intellectuals
had been campaigning. With a series of radical new
works in the 1760s, among them Orfeo ed Euridice and
Alceste, he broke the stranglehold that Metastasian
opera seria had enjoyed for much of the century. Gluck
introduced more drama by using simpler recitative and
cutting the usually long da capo aria. His later operas
have half the length of a typical baroque opera.
The strong influence of French opera encouraged Gluck
to move to Paris in November 1773. Fusing the
traditions of Italian opera and the French (with rich
chorus) into a unique synthesis, Gluck wrote eight
operas for the Parisian stage. Iphigénie en Tauride
(1779) was a great success and is generally
acknowledged to be his finest work. Though he was
extremely popular and widely credited with bringing
about a revolution in French opera, Gluck's mastery of
the Parisian operatic scene was never absolute, and
after the poor reception of his Echo et Narcisse
(1779), he left Paris in disgust and returned to Vienna
to live out the remainder of his life.
Gluck had long pondered the fundamental problem of form
and content in opera. He thought both of the main
Italian operatic genres, opera buffa and opera seria,
had strayed too far from what opera should really be
and seemed unnatural. Opera buffa had long lost its
original freshness. Its jokes were threadbare and the
repetition of the same characters made them seem no
more than stereotypes. In opera seria, the singing was
devoted to superficial effects and the content was
uninteresting and fossilised. As in opera buffa, the
singers were effectively absolute masters of the stage
and the music, decorating the vocal lines so floridly
that audiences could no longer recognise the original
melody. Gluck wanted to return opera to its origins,
focusing on human drama and passions and making words
and music of equal importance.
Gluck's reformist ballet Don Juan become popular
however, a more important work was soon to follow. On 5
October 1762, Orfeo ed Euridice was given its first
performance, on a libretto by Calzabigi, set to music
by Gluck. Gluck tried to achieve a noble, Neo-Classical
or "beautiful simplicity". The dances were arranged by
Angiolini and the title role was taken by Guadagni, a
catalytic force in Gluck's reform, renowned for his
unorthodox acting and singing style. Orfeo, which has
never left the standard repertory, showed the
beginnings of Gluck's reforms. His idea was to make the
drama of the work more important than the star singers
who performed it, and to do away with dry recitative
(recitativo secco, accompanied only by continuo) that
broke up the action. In 1765 Melchior Grimm published
"Poème lyrique", an influential article for the
Encyclopédie on lyric and opera librettos.
Although only half of his work survived after a fire in
1809, Gluck's musical legacy includes approximately 35
complete full-length operas plus around a dozen shorter
operas and operatic introductions, as well as numerous
ballets and instrumental works. His reforms influenced
Mozart, particularly his opera Idomeneo (1781). He left
behind a flourishing school of disciples in Paris, who
would dominate the French stage throughout the
Revolutionary and Napoleonic period. As well as
Salieri, they included Sacchini, Cherubini, Méhul and
Spontini. His greatest French admirer would be Hector
Berlioz, whose epic Les Troyens may be seen as the
culmination of the Gluckian tradition. Though Gluck
wrote no operas in German, his example influenced the
German school of opera, particularly Carl Maria von
Weber and Richard Wagner, whose concept of music drama
was not so far removed from Gluck's own.
Source: Wikipedia
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christoph_Willibald_Gluc
k).
Although originally written for Opera, I created this
interpretation of the Aria: "Che farò senza Euridice?"
from "Orfeo ed Euridice" (Wq 30 Act III Scene I) for
Flute & Piano.
PARTITION