Christoph Willibald Gluck
(1714-1787) was the son of a forester. Such musical education as he
received he acquired in Italy, and his earlier works are written in the
Italian style which was fashionable at the time. There are few
indications in his youthful operas of the power which was destined later
to work such changes in the world of opera. He was at first
whole-hearted in his devotion to the school of Porpora, Hasse and the
others who did so much to degrade Italian opera. 'Artaserse,' his first
work, was produced in 1741, the year in which Handel bade farewell for
ever to the stage. It was successful, and was promptly followed by
others no less fortunate. In 1745 Gluck visited England where he
produced 'La Caduta de' Giganti,' a work which excited the contempt of
Handel. In the following year he produced 'Piramo e Tisbe,' a pasticcio,
which failed completely. Its production, however, was by no means labour
lost, if it be true, as the story goes, that it was by its means that
Gluck's eyes were opened to the degradation to which opera had been
reduced. It was about this time that Gluck first heard Rameau's music,
and the power and simplicity of it compared with the empty sensuousness
of Italian opera, must have materially strengthened him in the desire to
do something to reform and purify his art. Yet, in spite of good
resolutions, Gluck's progress was slow. In 1755 he settled at Vienna,
and there, under the shadow of the court, he produced a series of works
in which the attempt to realise dramatic truth is often distinctly
perceptible, though the composer had as yet not mastered the means for
its attainment. But in 1762 came 'Orfeo ed Euridice,' a work which
placed Gluck at the head of all living operatic composers, and laid the
foundation of the modern school of opera.

The libretto of 'Orfeo' was by Calzabigi, a prominent man of letters,
but it seems probable that Gluck's own share in it was not a small one.
The careful study which he had given to the proper conditions of opera
was not likely to exclude so important a question as that of the
construction and diction of the libretto, and the poem of 'Orfeo' shows
so marked an inclination to break away from the conventionality and sham
sentiment of the time that we can confidently attribute much of its
originality to the influence of the composer himself. The opening scene
shows the tomb of Eurydice erected in a grassy valley. Orpheus stands
beside it plunged in the