lishments;
the _aria di portamento_, introducing long swelling notes, affording
the singer opportunity for illustrating his length of breath and
sustaining power. And so on with several other forms of aria. The
part of hero, whether male or female, was assigned to a man, an
artificial soprano, although it might be a hero--like Hercules, for
example. The subject had to be classical, and the _denouement_ happy.
There were invariably six principal characters, three men and three
women. The first woman was always a high soprano; the second or third
a contralto; the first man, always the hero of the piece, an
artificial soprano. The second man might be an artificial soprano or a
contralto. The third man might be a bass or tenor. But it was not at
all unusual to confide all the male parts to artificial sopranos. Each
principal character claimed the right to sing an aria in each of the
three acts of the drama. Each scene ended with an aria of some one of
the classes already mentioned, but no two arias of the same class were
permitted to follow each other. Gluck was the reformer destined by the
fates to rectify some of these artificial traditions. He was educated
at the Jesuit seminary in Komotow, and later in Prague. He was engaged
in the musical forces of Prince Melzi, who took him to Italy, where he
became a pupil of the famous Italian composer and teacher, Sammartini.
To this fact, no doubt, is due his early attachment to the Italian
opera.

Here he wrote several operas, all more or less in the Italian style as
he had been taught it, and as he heard it upon every hand. His first
work, "_Artaserse_," the book by Metastasio, was produced with such
success in Milan, in 1741, that he presently wrote several others for
other Italian theaters. For Venice in 1741, "_Demetrio_," and
"_Ipermestra_"; for Cremona, "_Artamene_" (1743); for Turin,
"_Alessandro nelle Indie_" (1745); for Milan, "_Demofoonte_,"
"_Siface_" and "_Fedra_" (1742-1744); in all, eight operas in five
years. None of these works in their complete form are now in
existence; fragments alone have been preserved. If any inference is
justified from these extracts the style throughout was that of the
Italian opera of the day.

The fame of Gluck had now extended to England, and in 1745 he was
invited to London to compose operas for the Haymarket theater. He came
and wrote the year following (1746) "_La Caduta de Giganti_," after
which he produced the Cremona opera. Hae