This volume presents a collection of essays by leading Gluck scholars which highlight the best of recent and classic contributions to Gluck scholarship, many of which are now difficult to access. Tracing Gluck’s life, career and legacy, the essays offer a variety of approaches to the major issues and controversies surrounding the composer and his works and range from the degree to which reform elements are apparent in his early operas to his contribution to changing perceptions of Hellenism. The introduction identifies the major topics investigated and highlights the innovatory nature of many of the approaches, particularly those which address perceptions of the composer in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This volume, which focuses on one of the most fascinating and influential composers of his era, provides an indispensable resource for academics, scholars and libraries.

    Contents: Introduction. Part I Before Orfeo: Coming of age in Bohemia: the musical apprenticeships of Benda and Gluck, Daniel Heartz; The wandering minstrel: an 18th-century fiction?, Patricia Howard; The ‘sweet song’ in Demofoonte: a Gluck borrowing from Handel, John H. Roberts; Gluck nella ‘Gazetta di Milano’: 1742-1745, Klaus Hortschansky; The Sachsen-Hildburghausen Kapelle and the symphonies of Christoph Willibald Gluck, Jen-yen Chen. Part II Gluck in Vienna: From Garrick to Gluck: the reform of theatre and opera in the mid-18th century, Daniel Heartz; The libertine reformed: ‘Don Juan’ by Gluck and Angiolini, Charles C. Russell; Some questions on the original version of Gluck and Angiolini’s Don Juan, Sibylle Dahms; Gluck’s Rencontre Imprévue and its revisions, Bruce Alan Brown; Gluck and the ‘festa teatrale’, Raymond Monelle; Un manifeste en musique, Michel Noiray; An island entire of itself: Gluck’s Telemaco, Max Loppert; Gluck’s Alceste in Bologna: production and performance at the Teatro Comunale, 1778, Margaret R. Butler. Part III Gluck in Paris: From Vienna to Paris: Gluck and the French opera, Julian Rushton; Gluck and Lully, Herbert Schneider; Musical setting and scenic movement: chorus and choeur dansé in 18th-century Parisian Opéra, Thomas Betzwieser; Royal Agamemnon: the two versions of Gluck’s Iphigénie en Aulide, Julian Rushton; Der Deus ex machina in Gluck's Iphigenie in Aulis, Wilhelm Weismann; A Bach borrowing by Gluck: another frontier, George J. Buelow; Expression and revision in Gluck’s Orfeo and Alceste, F.W. Sternfeld. Part IV Reception and Legacy: Some thoughts on Gluck and the reform of the opera, H.C. Robbins Landon; Berlioz and Gluck, Joël-Marie Fauquet; Iphigénie à Paris: positioning Gluck historically in early 20th-century France, William Gibbons; Who killed Gluck?, Simon Goldhill. Name index.

    Biography

    Patricia Howard is Visiting Research Fellow at the Open University, UK.