In 1750 after many disappointments, he was married to a lady he had long adored. They lived happily together, for Marriane Pergin not only brought him money which was a great joy, but was always his devoted and understanding help-mate. She was an accomplished woman, and a companion that many might envy. But, sad to say, they had no children, so they adopted a niece of Christoph’s, a lovely little girl with great musical talent. The three lived lovingly together until the poor little child sickened and died, making the Glucks most unhappy, for they adored her, as is often the case, even more than if she had been their own child.
In 1751 Gluck journeyed to Naples. Didn’t he travel a lot in the days of the stage coach and brigands! In the same year he became conductor to Prince Frederick at Vienna and in 1754 was officially attached to the opera, and Maria Theresa made him court chapel master.
Soon after, the Pope, pleased with what he had done in Rome, made him Chevalier of the Golden Spur and from that time he always styled himself Ritter (Chevalier) von Gluck.
In Il re pastore (The Shepherd King), we see the dawning of Gluck’s best period of writing (1756). The overture is better music than he had written before, and from this time on, Gluck became the genius in the opera world for which he is known. From 1756 to 1760 he lived apart from the world studying and after this he began to broadcast his ideas in writing and composing.
When the Archduke Joseph of Austria, afterwards the Emperor, married Isabella of Bourbon, Gluck wrote Tetede which was performed with great pomp. After this he wrote the ballet Don Giovanni, or The Libertine, particularly interesting, for it certainly gave Mozart an idea for his own great work Don Giovanni.
Again our “wandering minstrel” moved, this time to Bologna where he conducted a new opera which, strange to say, showed not a sign of his new ideas!
“Orpheus and Euridice” is Born
Soon he met Calzabigi, another librettist, with whom he wrote his first epoch-making opera Orpheus and Euridice. Although in some parts it is written like the older operas, he used many of his new ideas. The public at first were bewildered but they liked it. The next opera written with his new librettist was Alceste, so different was it, and so full of his best thought that the public did not like it. The pleasure-loving people went to be amused and heard music almost as serious as oratorio. It was austere, and its climax was not satisfactory. Yet it and Orpheus and Euridice mark the birth of music drama which Mozart and Wagner developed further.
In Orpheus and Euridice the chorus was an important part of the drama as it had been in the old Greek drama from which Gluck took many of his stories; and was not something dragged in to fill up space. Instead, too, of the over-embroidered arias they were simple and expressive, and the characters were real living beings, instead of figures on which to drape showy melodies. Naturally, the composers were jealous of him and went so far as to say that the principal singer had written Orpheus and Euridice.
Gluck said of his Alceste: “I seek to put music to its true purpose; that is, to support the poem, and thus to strengthen the expression of the feelings and the interest of the situation without interrupting the action.... In short, I have striven to abolish all those bad habits which sound reasoning and true taste have been struggling against now for so long in vain.” He abolished the unnecessary cadenza, a fancy, trilly part composed by the soloist himself and used just before the close of a piece. You will see in a later chapter how Beethoven dealt with it.