Gluck: Orfeo Ed Euridice

Description

Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714-1787)Orfeo ed EuridiceThe son of a forester who, by 1727, was in the service of Prince Philipp Hyazinth von Lobkowitz, Christoph Willibald Gluck was born in 1714 and spent his childhood in his native Bohemia, with its strong musical traditions. He studied at the University of Prague, while continuing his own musical activities, and by 1734 was in Vienna, it is supposed with the patronage of the Lobkowitz family. There followed a period in Italy, chiefly in Milan, during which he began to establish himself as a composer of opera. It was perhaps through his connection with the Lobkowitz family that he found himself in 1746 in London, commissioned to provide opera for the King’s Theatre, and the following years brought employment in various cities of Europe. In 1750 he married in Vienna and in the next years wrote operas on libretti by Metastasio for that city, for Prague, Naples and Rome, while serving first as Konzertmeister and then as Kapellmeister to the Prince of Saxe-Hildburghausen. For this patron he set Metastasio’s libretto Le cinesi, a sumptuous performance of which for the Emperor brought a satisfactory reward, not least in establishing Gluck in court circles. During the decade he collaborated with Count Durazzo, who had been appointed in 1754 to take charge of the two principal theatres of Vienna, particularly in the provision of adaptations of French opéra comique for the Viennese stage. The collaboration with Durazzo was of great importance both for Gluck and for the history of opera. In 1755 he became court composer and in 1759 composer of ballets, with responsibility in the following year for theatre music. In 1761 he collaborated with the dancer and ballet-master Gasparo Angiolini in a new ballet d’action, a ballet with a story, following now current fashions, Don Juan ou Le festin de pierre (Don Juan or The Stone Guest). The arrival in Vienna that year of Ranieri de’ Calzabigi was the catalyst for a change of course for opera, now abandoning the conventions of Metastasian opera seria in favour of a new simplicity and a measure of dramatic realism. The first result of the joint work of Calzabigi, Angiolini and Gluck, under the encouragement of Count Durazzo, was Orfeo ed Euridice. There were to be two further ‘reform’ operas with Calzabigi, in 1767 Alceste (Naxos 8.66066-68) and in 1770 Paride ed Elena. Between 1774 and 1779 Gluck enjoyed considerable success in Paris, where a French version of Orfeo ed Euridice was staged in August, 1774, and an adaptation of Alceste two years later. The failure of his Ovidian Echo et Narcisse and ill-health brought him in 1779 back to Vienna, where he remained until his death in 1787. Gluck later credited Calzabigi with the inspiration for Orfeo ed Euridice, a judgement in which the librettist himself fully concurred. Calzabigi laid particular stress on the relationship between opera and declamation, in one sense a return