Orpheus und Eurydike

by Christoph Willibald Gluck

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Genres: Music, Classics, Plays, Mythology

47 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 1985

About the author

Christoph Willibald (Ritter von) Gluck (1714 - 1787) was a composer of Italian and French opera in the early classical period. Born in the Upper Palatinate and raised in Bohemia, both part of the Holy Roman Empire, he gained prominence at the Habsburg court at Vienna. There he brought about the practical reform of opera's dramaturgical practices for which many intellectuals had been campaigning. With a series of radical new works in the 1760s, among them Orfeo ed Euridice and Alceste, he broke the stranglehold that Metastasian opera seria had enjoyed for much of the century. Gluck introduced more drama by using simpler recitative and cutting the usually long da capo aria. His later operas have half the length of a typical baroque opera.

The strong influence of French opera encouraged Gluck to move to Paris in November 1773. Fusing the traditions of Italian opera and the French (with rich chorus) into a unique synthesis, Gluck wrote eight operas for the Parisian stage. Iphigénie en Tauride (1779) was a great success and is generally acknowledged to be his finest work. Though he was extremely popular and widely credited with bringing about a revolution in French opera, Gluck's mastery of the Parisian operatic scene was never absolute, and after the poor reception of his Echo et Narcisse (1779), he left Paris in disgust and returned to Vienna to live out the remainder of his life.

Reviews

[Charlise · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the Vienna version of the opera, in Italian with German translation.

[SAMUrai · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mir gefällt die Version, die mit der Katastrophe endet deutlich besser, als die mit dem "happy end" aber beides sind tolle Geschichten über die Bedeutung der Liebe und die Sehnsucht nach der geliebten Person

[Izzy Libertine · Rating 3 out of 5]

in my memory there was a different ending than in the book?!

[Two Readers in Love · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this libretto March 22, 2021 in preparation for seeing the Met Opera's pandemic stream of this opera: "Mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe stars as the “father of music” in Gluck’s adaptation of the immortal Orpheus myth. The 2009 Live in HD transmission of Orfeo ed Euridice also features sopranos Danielle de Niese as Euridice and Heidi Grant Murphy as Amore. Enjoy director-choreographer Mark Morris’s spirited—and spirit-filled—staging."