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Christoph Willibald Gluck 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 operas in the 1760s, among them Orfeo ed Euridice and Alceste, Gluck introduced more drama to opera by using orchestral recitative and cutting the usually long da capo aria. His later operas are half the length of a typical baroque opera. Future composers like Mozart, Schubert, Berlioz, and Wagner revered Gluck.

The strong influence of French opera enticed Gluck to move to Paris in November 1773. Fusing the traditions of Italian opera with the rich choruses popular in France, Gluck wrote eight operas with a unique synthesis 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. After the poor reception of his Echo et Narcisse (1779), he left Paris and lived out the remainder of his life in Vienna.

Wikipedia contributors, "Christoph Willibald Gluck," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia,  (accessed July 26, 2024).

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