Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume VIII.djvu/51

 GLUOK 43 house of Joseph Pergin, a banker and wholesale merchant, he was received both as a friend and as music teacher of the two daughters. With Marianne he fell in love, and his passion was returned. The mother approved the match, but when the young man applied to the father for the hand of his daughter, he was rudely refused, as being but a musician. Wounded by this, Gluck now accepted an order to com- pose Telemacco for the theatre Argentina at Eome, and left Vienna at once, in such haste to be away that, without waiting for his pass r port, he smuggled himself across the boundary in the habit of a Capuchin monk. In 1750 news came to him that Pergin was dead. As m as his opera was upon the stage, where, all his other works, it was successful, he hastened back to Vienna, and on Sept. 15 was larried. The marriage was childless, but few been happier, and seldom even during his lost tedious journeys were Gluck and his wife iparated. In 1751 he visited Naples, to pro- La clemema di Tito; in 1754 he com- Le Cinesi, a fantastic production, per- led at Schlosshof before the emperor and Theresa ; and the same year he was appointed chapelmaster of the imperial opera at Vienna, which office he held until 1764. jfore the close of the year he was again called Rome, and produced there II trionfo di Ca- millo and Antigono, which gained him from the >pe the order of knight of the golden spur ; lence his title in musical history, Chevalier or r. In 1755 he produced the music to Me- sio's Ladanza; in 1756, Vinnocenzagim- ita in one act, and II re pastore in three, tween 1755 and 1762 he composed also a 3at number of airs and other pieces for a jries of ten French operettas and vaudevilles srformed in Vienna. In 1760 his principal /ork was Tetide, a serenata composed for the mptials of the archduke Joseph ; and in 1761 a most successful ballet, Don Juan, or Das stei- nerne Gastmahl, founded upon the same fable jrward employed by Da Ponte in his text to Mozart's immortal opera. In 1762 77 trionfo li Clelia was composed at Bologna, and met rith the invariable success of Gluck's produc- tions, and then its author returned to Vienna. Calzabigi had there ready for him the libretto Orfeo ed Euridice, a poem differing com- )letely in construction from the Metastasian type, which then alone was recognized as clas- sic throughout Europe. Orpheus, Eurydice, and, in two or three short scenes, Amor are the only characters represented. At the be- ginning and end a chorus of Greeks, in Tarta- rus a chorus of shades and demons, in Elysium a chorus of blest spirits, each occupying a sin- gle scene, with choral music and ballet, is all that divides the attention from the three lead- ing characters. The subject, opening with a chorus at the tomb lamenting the death of Eu- rydice, is the familiar myth, only changed at the close, where Amor appears and finally re- stores the beloved one to Orpheus. There is but little action, and that of the simplest char- acter. Everything depended upon exciting the sympathies of the audience at the outset, and holding them to the end, and this too by musical means then new and strange. Twice in this work Gluck has shown the daring of genius trusting to its own powers, in a manner not surpassed by Beethoven himself. At the close of the first chorus Orpheus dismisses his friends, and is left alone not merely to execute a recitative and single air, written expressly for the singer to exhibit his powers, but a series of them, in which not an ornament or cadenza is admitted, and which nothing but the depths of expression in Gluck's music could redeem even now from the fatal fault of tedium. The other case is that in which Orpheus entering Tartarus is confronted by demons and shades, who by the force of his music at length are led to give way and allow him to pass on to Ely- sium. On Oct. 5, 1762, the opera was perform- ed in public. Surprise and astonishment were the emotions with which the audience left the house. All hearts had been strangely moved. It had interested the company from the first singer to the most insignificant dancer in the bal- let, and was given with rare perfection. The music made its way to all hearts, it became a most popular work in Vienna, and is still a stock piece in Berlin. In 1763-'5 Gluck com- posed Enzio, text by Metastasio; La rencontre imprevue, text by L. H. Dancovot (afterward very popular in a German translation with the title Die Pilgrime von Melcka) ; and II Par- nasso confmo, a dramatic poem by Metastasio, performed in the palace at Schonbrunn by the four daughters of Maria Theresa, sisters of Marie Antoinette, their brother, the future emperor Joseph, playing the harpsichord ; re- vised Telemacco for the Vienna stage, and com- posed La corona for the archduchesses. The last piece was never performed, owing to the sudden death of the emperor Francis. The dramatic form of none of these works, although they gave Gluck opportunity to prove his inex- haustible fund of melodic and harmonic beauty, enabled him to follow the path struck out in the Orfeo. In the mean time Calzabigi prepared another libretto for him, founded upon the " Alcestis " of Euripides, and it was successful. In 1769 it was printed in score, with the cele- brated dedicatory epistle to the grand duke of Tuscany. " When I undertook to set the opera Alceste to music," he writes, "I purposed care- fully to avoid all those abuses which the mis- taken vanity of the singers, and the too great good nature of composers, had introduced into the Italian opera ; abuses which reduced one of the noblest and most beautiful forms of the drama to the most tedious and ridiculous. I sought therefore to bring back music to its true sphere, that is, to add to the force of the poetry, to strengthen the expression of the emotions and the interest of the situations, without inter- rupting the action or deforming the music by useless ornamentation. I was of opinion that