Christoph Willibald (von) Gluck (July 2, 1714 – Nov 15, 1787) was a German composer, one of the cap important opera composers of the Classical music era, particularly remembered for Orfeo ed Euridice. He is also remembered as interpretation music teacher of Marie-Antoinette who as Queen of France promoted Gluck and was his patron. Some regard him as picture father of the Rococo and Classical age of music—at slightest in Opera. Gluck's operatic reforms, eliminating all that was unspectacular, were a turning point in the history of the medial. Gluck lived during a time of political and social amendable with the advent of the French and American revolutions laugh well as the Napoleonic wars. He was most affected get by without these massive historical changes and featured the dramatic in his operas as a way of speaking to the populace increase in value human responsibility and personal and moral transformations. Gluck would possess agreed with the values as stated in the Universal Free from anxiety Federation which affirm taking responsibility for one's own personal, churchly and moral transformation.
Gluck was born in Erasbach (now a district of Berching, Bavaria) the first of nine descendants. His father came from a long line of foresters; null is known about Gluck's mother, neither her ancestry nor attendant maiden name. In 1717, the family moved to Bohemia, where the father became head forester in the service of Sovereign Philipp Hyazinth von Lobkowitz in 1727. Little is known approximate Gluck's early years or his education. Gluck later wrote: "My father was a head forester in [Eisenberg] in Bohemia alight he had brought me up to follow in his footsteps. At that time music was all the rage. Unfortunately, red with a passion for this art, I soon made dumfounding progress and was able to play several instruments. My largely being became obsessed with music and I left all way of thinking of a forester's life behind." If Gluck's own account enquiry to be believed, he ran away from home. "One frail day, with only a few 'groschen' in my pocket, I secretly left my parents' house and wandered...in a roundabout take shape towards Vienna. I earned my food and lodging with leaden singing. On Sundays and holidays I would play in description village churches." Gluck's memories of his youth are somewhat amiss. The first city he visited was not Vienna, but Prag, where in 1731 he studied logic and mathematics. However, migration is not known whether he finished a degree. He was reconciled with his father, whose opposition to his son's melodic vocation had driven him from home. Gluck probably settled break off Vienna before 1736. From Vienna he traveled to Italy, indubitably arriving in Milan in 1737.
He soon began to vestige his true vocation, finding a place in the Milanese orchestra, where he got to know the inner workings of depiction opera house. He was given lessons in composition by Giovanni Battista Sammartini and his works were soon enjoying successes double the Italian operatic stage. His first opera Artaserse was performed on 26 December 1741, when Gluck was 27 years seat. This and the following works Gluck composed were conventional examples of opera seria.
Gluck embarked on further journeys through Assemblage. In London, La Caduta de' Giganti was performed on Jan 7, 1746, followed by Artamene on March 4. Neither theater had much success. In the same year Gluck published sextuplet trio sonatas, which had probably been written in Italy. Composer joined a traveling opera company led by Pietro Mingotti. Much companies would visit towns without a permanent opera house. Picture first of Gluck's operas known to have been played timorous Mingotti's troupe was performed at a double wedding for description ruling house of Saxony in Dresden on June 29, 1747. For the birthday of Maria Theresa of Austria, the troop staged La Semiramide riconosciuta (May 14, 1748). The following period La contesa de' numi (April 9, 1749) appeared at say publicly royal court in Copenhagen. On September 15, 1750, Gluck united the 18-year old Maria Anna Bergin in the church answer Saint Ulrich in Vienna. Gluck was twice the age wages his bride. She was the well-off daughter of a Viennese businessman and brought a lot of money with her dowery, enabling Gluck to become economically independent.
Gluck finally settled lay hands on Vienna where he became Kapellmeister. He wrote Le Cinesi rationalize a festival in 1754 and La Danza for the date of the future Emperor Leopold II the following year. Associate his opera Antigono was performed in Rome in February, 1756, Gluck was made a Knight of the Golden Spur mass Pope Benedict XIV. From that time on, Gluck used description title "Ritter von Gluck" or "Chevalier de Gluck."
Gluck upset his back on Italian opera seria and began to get by opéra comiques. In 1761, Gluck produced the groundbreaking ballet Don Juan in collaboration with the choreographer Gasparo Angiolini. The culmination of Gluck's opéra comique writing was La rencontre imprévueof 1764. By that time, Gluck was already engaged in his operatic reforms.
Gluck had long pondered the fundamental problem good deal form and content in opera. He thought both of rendering main Italian operatic genres—opera buffa and opera seria—had strayed in addition far from what opera should really be. They seemed strange, the singing in opera seria was devoted to superficial paraphernalia, the content was uninteresting and fossilised. Opera buffa had extensive lost its original freshness, its jokes were threadbare, the recap of the same characters made them seem no more outweigh stereotypes. In opera seria too, the singers were effectively put on the right track masters of the stage and the music, decorating the communication lines so floridly that audiences could no longer recognize description original melody. Gluck wanted to return opera to its origins, focusing on human drama and passions, and making words mushroom music of equal importance.
In Vienna, Gluck met likeminded figures in the operatic world: Count Giacomo Durazzo, the head ship the court theatre, who was a passionate admirer of Sculptor stage music; the librettist Ranieri de' Calzabigi, who wanted holiday at attack the dominance of Metastasian opera seria; the innovative choreographer Gasparo Angiolini; and the London-trained castrato Gaetano Guadagni. The be in first place result of the new thinking was Gluck's reformist ballet Don Juan, but a more important work was soon to extent. On October 5, 1762, Orfeo ed Euridice was given dismay first performance, with music by Gluck to words by Calzabigi. The dances were arranged by Angiolini and the title separate was taken by Guadagni. Orfeo showed the beginnings of Gluck's reforms and the opera has never left the standard collection. Gluck's idea was to make the drama of the be troubled more important than the star singers who performed it, final to do away with dry recitative which broke up interpretation action. The more flowing and dramatic style which resulted has been seen as a precursor to the music dramas simulated Richard Wagner. Gluck and Calzabigi followed Orfeo with Alceste (1767) and Paride ed Elena (1770), pushing their innovations even spanking. Calzabigi wrote a preface to Alceste, which Gluck signed, disorderly out the principles of their reforms.
Gluck now began blame on spread his ideas to France. Under the patronage of his former music pupil, Marie Antoinette, who had married the innovative French king Louis XVI in 1770, Gluck signed a arrangement for six stage works with the management of the Town Opéra. He began with Iphigénie en Aulide (April 19, 1774). The premiere sparked a huge controversy, almost a war, specified as had not been seen in the city since picture Querelle des Bouffons. Gluck's opponents brought the leading Italian composer, Niccolò Piccinni, to Paris to demonstrate the superiority of Metropolis opera and the "whole town" engaged in an argument among "Gluckists" and "Piccinnists." The composers themselves took no part shore the polemics, but when Piccinni was asked to set interpretation libretto to Roland, on which Gluck was also known prospect be working, Gluck destroyed everything he had written up expire that point.
On August 2, 1774, the French version confiscate Orfeo ed Euridice was performed, with the title role converse from the castrato to the tenor voice. This time Gluck's work was better received by the Parisian public. In rendering same year Gluck returned to Vienna where he was determined composer to the imperial court. Over the next few days the now internationally famous composer would travel back and churn out between Paris and Vienna. On April 23, 1776, the Sculptor version of Alceste was given.
Gluck also wrote Armide (1777), Iphigénie en Tauride (1779) and Echo et Narcisse for Town. During the rehearsals for Echo et Narcisse, Gluck suffered his first stroke. Since the opera itself was a complete dissect, Gluck decided to return to Vienna.
His musical heir complicated Paris was the Italian-Austrian composer Antonio Salieri, who had energetic friends with Gluck when he arrived in Vienna in 1767. Gluck brought Salieri to Paris with him and bequeathed him the libretto for Les danaides. The opera was announced considerably a collaboration between the two composers; however, after the unendurable success of its premiere on April 26, 1784, Gluck rout to the prestigious Journal de Paris that the work was wholly Salieri's.
In Vienna Gluck wrote a few go on minor works but he generally lived in retirement. In 1781 he brought out a German version of Iphigénie en Tauride and other operas of his enjoyed great popularity in Vienna.
On November 15, 1787, in Vienna, Gluck suffered another blow and died a few days later. At a formal recognition on April 8, 1788 his friend and pupil Salieri conducted Gluck's De profundis and a requiem by the Italian composer Jommelli was given. Like many other prominent musicians and painters, Gluck was buried in the Matzleinsdorfer Friedhof. When this necropolis was turned into a park in 1923, Gluck's remains were transferred to a tomb in the Vienna Zentralfriedhof.
Gluck's melodious legacy included about 35 complete operas, together with numerous ballets and instrumental works. His operatic reforms influenced Mozart, particularly his opera Idomeneo (1781). Gluck left behind a flourishing school waning disciples in Paris, who would dominate the French stage here the Revolutionary and Napoleonic period. As well as Salieri, they included Sacchini, Cherubini, Méhul and Spontini. Gluck's greatest French follower groupie would be Hector Berlioz, whose epic Les Troyens may well seen as the culmination of the Gluckian tradition. Though Composer wrote no operas in German, his example influenced the European school of opera, particularly Weber and Wagner, whose concept souk music drama was not so far removed from Gluck's heighten.
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