[14] Gluck’s marriage was childless, but he had adopted a niece, Marianne Gluck, who had a pretty voice and pursued her musical training under his care. Both Gluck’s wife and niece usually accompanied him in his travels.
[15] After Iphigénie en Aulide Paris became the international centre of operatic composition. London was more in the nature of an exchange, where it was possible for artists to win a good deal of money quickly and easily; the glory of the great Italian stages dimmed more and more, and Vienna, Dresden, Berlin, and Munich were only locally important. Operatic control passed from the Italian to the French stage at the same time German instrumental composition began its victories.
[16] Gluck declared that the music of Armide was intended ‘to give a voluptuous sensation,’ and La Harpe’s assertion that he had made Armide a sorceress rather than an enchantress, and that her part was ‘une criallerie monotone et fatigante,’ drew forth as bitter a reply from the composer as Wagner ever wrote to his critics.
[17] W. H. Hadow: Oxford History of Music, Vol. V.
[18] During this period he produced his famous operas, Le gelosie vilane; Fernace (1776), Achille in Sciro (1779), Giulio Sabino (1781).
[19] André Erneste Modeste Grétry, born, Liège, 1742; died, near Paris, 1813. ‘His Influence on the opéra comique was a lasting one; Isouard, Boieldieu, Auber, Adam, were his heirs.’—Riemann.
[20] The Paris Conservatoire de Musique, succeeding the Bourbon École de chant et de déclamation (1784) and the revolutionary Institut National de Musique (1793), was established 1795, with Sarrette as director and with liberal government support. Cherubini became its director in 1822, and its enormous influence on the general trend of French art dates from his administration.
[21] The two theatres, after about ten years’ rivalry, united as the Opéra Comique which, under government subsidy, has continued to flourish to this day.