IN spite of the labors of Rameau the prevailing style of Italian opera gained a footing in Paris, where its cheap melody and direct appeal to the unthinking gave it a dangerous popularity. Its unreality, its dramatic infidelity, and above all its exaltation of the singer above the composer, went far toward leading the Parisians astray from the true opera given them by Lulli and Rameau. It required the work of a man of true genius, guided by the sincere dramatic purposes of the earlier composers, to restore opera in France to its position of artistic nobility and to fix it there. The man who achieved this was Christopher Willibald Gluck, who turned to Paris only when he found that his work failed of appreciation elsewhere.
Gluck was born July 2, 1714, at Weidenwang, near the frontier of Bavaria and Bohemia. He received his early musical instruction in a Jesuit seminary. In 1737 or 1738 he went to Italy in the service of Prince Melzi. In Italy he wrote and produced, in 1741, his first opera, "Artaserse." In five years he wrote eight operas, all of which are utterly forgotten. They were built on the conventional plan of the Italian opera seria of the time. In 1745 Gluck went to England, where two important things occurred: he produced a wretched work called "Piramo e Tisbe," which failed; and he heard Handel's oratorios. His "Piramo e Tisbe" was a pasticcio,—an opera made up of tunes selected from his earlier works. Gluck's innate genius led him to perceive that the failure of the opera was due to its lack of dramatic sincerity, its complete want of organic unity. He began to understand that the opera must be a drama expressed in musical terms. He went to Paris, heard Rameau's operas, and learned something about French recitative.
But he was not yet ready to put his half-formed theories to the test. He wrote several operas in his early style, but at length he felt that he must break with the artificial conventions. Raniero di Calzabigi became his librettist, and the result of their joint labors was "Orfeo," produced at Vienna, Oct. 5, 1762. He followed this with several minor works in his old style, but on Dec. 16, 1767, produced "Alceste," a complete and unyielding embodiment of his reformatory theories. In 1769 he produced "Paris and Helen." After this he decided that his operatic purposes would be better understood in Paris than in Germany, and he set out for the French capital. There he made an operatic version of Racine's "Iphigénie en Aulide," which was produced April 19, 1774. The work aroused the greatest enthusiasm among those who had been lamenting the decline of French opera since Rameau. "Orfeo" and "Alceste" were produced, and Gluck became the favorite of the nobility and the artistic circle.
The admirers of Italian opera were aroused by the success of Gluck, and selected as the champion who should overthrow him the gifted Italian composer Piccini. The musical warfare was quite as warm as the subsequent Wagner and anti-Wagnerite controversy. Men of letters bombarded each other with impolite phrases in the public prints, and ladies of fashion pelted each other with expressions unfit for publication at private dinners. The supporters of Gluck awaited eagerly a new work. On Sept. 23, 1777, he produced "Armide." It was only a success of esteem. On May 18, 1779, he brought out "Iphigénie en Aulide," and all Paris bowed its head before him. Even Piccini acknowledged his superiority. Gluck's last work was "Echo et Narcisse," Sept. 21, 1779. He became ill, and, after suffering for several years, died Nov. 15, 1787.
The simple fact that Gluck in beginning his labor of reform in opera selected for the subject of his libretto the story used by Rinuccini and Peri in "Euridice" shows that he embarked upon his undertaking with a sincere desire to get at the fundamental principles of the true drama per musica. From the miserable incongruity of his own "Piramo e Tisbe" he proceeded to the conviction that the ultimate purpose of opera music must be a correct and moving embodiment of the emotions expressed by the text. The methods which he regarded as efficient are best enumerated by himself in the preface to his "Alceste." He says:—
"I endeavored to reduce music to its proper function, that of seconding poetry by enforcing the expression of the sentiment and the interest of the situations without interrupting the action, or weakening it by superfluous ornament. My idea was that the relation of music to poetry was much the same as that of harmonious coloring and well disposed light and shade to an accurate drawing, which animates the figures without altering the outlines. I have therefore been very careful never to interrupt a singer in the heat of a dialogue in order to introduce a tedious ritornelle, nor to stop him in the middle of a piece either for the purpose of displaying the flexibility of his voice on some favorable vowel, or that the orchestra might give him time to take breath before a long-sustained note.
"Furthermore I have not thought it right to hurry through the second part of a song, if the words happened to be the most important of the whole, in order to repeat the first part regularly four times over; or to finish the air where the sense does not end in order to allow the singer to exhibit his power of varying the passage at pleasure. In fact my object was to put an end to abuses against which good taste and good sense have long protested in vain.
"My idea was that the overture ought to indicate the subject and prepare the spectators for the character of the piece they are about to see; that the instruments ought to be introduced in proportion to the degree of interest and passion in the words; and that it was necessary above all to avoid making too great a disparity between the recitative and the air of a dialogue, so as not to break the sense of a period or awkwardly interrupt the movement and animation of a scene. I also thought that my chief endeavor should be to attain a grand simplicity, and consequently I have avoided making a parade of difficulties at the cost of clearness. I have set no value on novelty as such, unless it was naturally suggested by the situation and suited to the expression. In short, there was no rule which I did not consider myself bound to sacrifice for the sake of effect."
Gluck, of course, meant for the sake of dramatic effect. His artistic creed, as set forth in this preface, is singularly clear and concentrated. Any one who examines a Gluck opera, or goes to hear his "Orfeo," which is still performed, in the expectation of finding a vast difference in the outward shape from that employed by the Italian opera composers of the time will be disappointed. The ground plan of opera had not been long enough before the world to satisfy serious thinkers that it might beneficially be subjected to a radical reform, a reform tending toward a restoration of the continued recitative of Peri. Opera had to pass through the middle stages of development, in which its forms were perfected and exhausted, before men could discover that as mere forms they were valueless for the purposes of dramatic expression, but that the materials out of which they were made could be utilized. This time has but recently arrived. Gluck was ahead of it. He was not prepared to discern the artificial restraints put upon free expression by the old formulas. And even if he had done so, he could not by any possibility have induced his public to follow him in an overthrow of all that they regarded as a necessary part of opera.
Gluck was compelled to use the aria form in his operas, because there was no other definite form in his day, and operatic art was not sufficiently comprehended by the public to admit of the introduction of a new form. The French ballet was a necessary part of his scheme. Even a century later the Parisians refused to accept opera without it. But Gluck restored to the aria its dramatic purpose. In his hands it was no longer a mere show piece for the singer, but a definite, carefully designed, and generally successful embodiment of an emotional state. The famous "Che faro senza Euridice" in his "Orfeo" is an admirable example of the Gluck aria at its best. To be sure, it sounds somewhat placid to us, accustomed as we are to the impassioned and highly colored musical diction of recent composers. But to the French of Gluck's day with their by no means incorrect conception of the purity and dignity of Greek art, which Gluck was trying to imitate, the "grand simplicity" of this style must have been highly influential. Indeed if there is one quality above all others in the music of Gluck's "Orfeo" which strikes the thoughtful listener of today, it is its classicism. It is a full and satisfying embodiment of what we believe to have been the Greek art spirit. One can think of Gluck's "Orfeo" as being performed in a Greek theatre of the age of Pericles, and the fancy does not shock the mind.