The old sinfonia in three movements which opened the opera, disappeared, and instead came the introduction or overture, suggesting the opera itself. He taught and wrote that composers could do anything to assist the action of the opera; he elevated the story to an important place; the characters in the plot were thought of as people and not as puppets, and they were studied individually and not as machinery only. The situations in the story governed the kind of music he used and he tried hard to make the orchestra a main part of the opera. It seems odd that nobody had thought of this before. Yet you have seen how much time had been given to the voice throughout the ages, and how long it had taken instruments to arrive at their full importance. So we see Gluck improving as he worked with a better librettist. From now the opera writer had to use thought in composition, as he would in writing a play.
A Very Cross Conductor!
But Gluck had trouble with the singers on account of his innovations. He was the crossest conductor of his time, would allow no one to dictate to him, and scolded the singers as they had never been scolded before.
He must have looked droll conducting, for he used to take off his wig during rehearsals, and wrap a cloth about his head to keep the draughts from fanning him! He would rage if the singers tried to do what they had been permitted to do in other operas! Some singers demanded extra pay when Gluck conducted. Sometimes he would repeat a passage twenty or thirty times and no pianissimo was soft enough and no fortissimo loud enough! Someone said of him while he was conducting, “He lives and dies with his heroines, he rages with Achilles, weeps with Iphigenia and in the dying scene of Alceste throws himself back in his chair and becomes as a corpse.”
Otherwise he was always the kind soul who attracted everybody from Marie Antoinette down. She used to receive him in her boudoir so that they could enjoy conversation without court formalities.
One day two prima donnas refused to obey him when rehearsing Iphigenia, and he said: “Mesdemoiselles, I have been summoned here to Paris especially to produce Iphigenia. If you sing, well and good, but if not, that is your business; only I shall then seek an audience with the Queen, and inform her that the opera cannot be performed, and I shall put myself into my carriage and straightway leave for Vienna.” You may know that the ladies did their best!
In closing let us tell you what Berlioz, a master of orchestration, said of Gluck’s orchestration in Alceste: “Of its kind I know nothing more dramatic, nothing more terror-inspiring.” And this was said of a man who had only the simplest orchestra with which to work. After much fighting, he was the first to introduce into the orchestra the kettle-drums and cymbals, which moderns have used with grandeur.
Gluck lived to see his own success, but the Piccinni strife and the jealousies may have weakened his constitution, for he died rather suddenly in 1787, a few weeks after the first performance of Mozart’s Don Giovanni.
There are many memorials in Europe to Gluck, not the least being his bust which stands beside Lully and Rameau in the Grand Opera of Paris.