Nationality:
German
Born:
Erasbach,
July 2nd
1714
Died:
Vienna,
15th
November 1787
Type
of music: French/Italian
opera
Main
works: Ofeo
ed Euridice (1762), Alceste (1767)
Gluck
lived in the Rococo age, which saw the transition from the Baroque
era to the classical period. To pursue his musical interests, he left
home at 13 and entered the service of a nobleman in Vienna. He then
moved with him to Italy, where his musical career took off.
By
1744, 8 of Gluck's operas had been produced in Italy. After 1745,
Gluck spent years travelling around Europe with an opera company
until he eventually married and moved to Vienna in 1754. It is here
he attained the post of composer at the court theatre.
Together
with the poet Raniero de Calzabigi, Gluck evolved opera according to
the changing tastes of audiences at the time. He wrote comic operas
and also ballet's such as 'Don Juan' in 1761. This would later
influence Mozart's 'Don Giovanni'. In 1762 he also composed the opera
'Orfeo ed Euridice', a setting of a tragic love story also used by
Monteverdi in the Renaissance.
On
the preface to the score of the opera 'Alceste', Gluck wrote that he
wanted to free opera from the traits “which have so long disfigured
Italian opera and made of the most splendid and beautiful of
spectacles the most ridiculous and wearisome.”
"Hearing
Iphigenie, I forgot that I am in an opera house and think I am
hearing a Greek tragedy” - Baron Grimm
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