Christoph Willibald Glück

1714 - 1787

German

Biography

German composer of Italian and French opera Christoph Willibald Gluck was born on July 2nd 1714 in Erasbach. He was a revolutionary composer as he reformed many aspects of dramatic practice that had been campaigned for by many intellectuals. He composed a number of radical operas in the 1760s including Orfeo ed Euridice and Alceste. His style was very much a synthesis of French and Italian operatic styles. His reception was reasonably mixed – he had some major successes and was almost universally agreed to have sparked a revolution in French opera, yet his final opera in Paris, Echo et Narcisse, was poorly received and caused him to leave Paris and return to Vienna in disgust to live out the last years of his life. He died in Vienna on November 15th 1787.

Performances

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