Christoph Willibald von Gluck

✶July 2, 1714

†November 15, 1787

3 candles burning, 11 lit in all

About their life

Christoph Willibald Ritter von Gluck was a composer of Italian and French opera in the early classical period. Born in the Upper Palatinate and raised in Bohemia, both part of the Holy Roman Empire at the time, he gained prominence at the Habsburg court in Vienna. There he brought about the practical reform of opera's dramaturgical practices for which many intellectuals had been campaigning. With a series of radical new works in the 1760s, among them Orfeo ed Euridice and Alceste, he broke the stranglehold that Metastasian opera seria had enjoyed for much of the century. Gluck introduced more drama by using orchestral recitative and cutting the usually long da capo aria. His later operas have half the length of a typical baroque opera.

opera composer (1714–1787)

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Biography from the article Christoph Willibald von Gluck on the English Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.