Christoph Willibald Gluck

Bohemian by birth and cosmopolitan in life, the early Classic-period composer Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714-1787) spent his adulthood variously in Prague, Vienna, Milan, London, and Paris, and along the way he helped revolutionize the way operas were conceived, and thus laid the groundwork for the music dramas of Richard Wagner (1813-1883).

Gluck's mythological Orfeo ed Euridice ("Orpheus and Eurydice," 1762) is generally regarded as the first "modern" opera. With it the composer abandoned the conventions of the prevailing opera seria, a stylized genre that typically introduces secco recitatives (i.e., those "dry," almost spoken passages accompanied only by harpsichord and bass instrument) to explain a situation, followed by florid arias in which the singers offer motionless reflections on said situation while the full orchestra supports their vocal pyrotechnics. Instead, Gluck favored a less contrived, more "naturalistic" dramatic style--except, of course, that everybody still goes around singing. This landmark opera has never left the repertoire, but Gluck did revise it a couple of times, most significantly for the 1774 Paris production, for which it became Orphée et Eurydice. The Parisians had a particular fondness for ballet, so, in addition to adapting the music to a French libretto from the original Italian, Gluck expanded the dance numbers, including adding a D-minor section to the existing F-major Menuet to create the well-known "Dance of the Blessed Spirits." This dance sequence heralds Orpheus's arrival in the Underworld, as he continues on his (ultimately unsuccessful) quest to lead his recently-deceased wife, Eurydice, back into the land of the apparently less-blessed living.