as produced. Here he conceived a passion for Marianne, the
daughter of Joseph Pergin, a rich banker; but on account of the father's
distaste for a musical son-in-law, the marriage did not occur till 1750.
"Telemacco" and "Clemenza di Tito" were composed about this time, and
performed in Vienna, Rome, and Naples. In 1755 our composer received the
order of the Golden Spur from the Roman pontiff in recognition of the
merits of two operas performed at Rome, called "Il Trionfo di Camillo"
and "Antigono." Seven years were now actively employed in producing
operas for Vienna and Italian cities, which, without possessing great
value, show the change which had begun to take place in this composer's
theories of dramatic music. In Paris he had been struck with the operas
of Rameau, in which the declamatory form was strongly marked. His early
Italian training had fixed in his mind the importance of pure melody.
From Germany he obtained his appreciation of harmony, and had made a
deep study of the uses of the orchestra. So we see this great reformer
struggling on with many faltering steps toward that result which he
afterward summed up in the following concise description: "My purpose
was to restrict music to its true office, that of ministering to the
expression of poetry, without interrupting the action."

In Calzabigi Gluck had met an author who fully appreciated his ideas,
and had the talent of writing a libretto in accordance with them. This
coadjutor wrote all the librettos that belonged to Gluck's greatest
period. He had produced his "Orpheus and Eurydice" and "Alceste" in
Vienna with a fair amount of success; but his tastes drew him strongly
to the French stage, where the art of acting and declamation was
cultivated then, as it is now, to a height unknown in other parts of
Europe. So Ave find him gladly accepting an offer from the managers of
the French Opera to migrate to the great city, in which were fermenting
with much noisy fervor those new ideas in art, literature, politics,
and society, which were turning the eyes of all Europe to the French
capital.

The world's history has hardly a more picturesque and striking
spectacle, a period more fraught with the working of powerful forces,
than that exhibited by French society in the latter part of Louis XV.'s
reign. We see a court rotten to the core with indulgence in every form
of sensuality and vice, yet glittering with the veneer of a social
polish which made it the admi