6. Paris, 1774–9.

In his visits to Paris, Gluck alternately used his social skills and his image as a rough-hewn genius in order to overcome the many institutional and personal obstacles he faced in trying to renew French serious opera. His way was smoothed by Roullet and his diplomatic contacts: negotiations were carried out by the Austrian ambassador to France, Count Mercy-Argenteau. In October 1772 Roullet published an open letter in the Mercure de France, addressed to Antoine Dauvergne, a director of the Académie Royale de Musique (the Opéra); this was followed up in March 1773 by a letter, signed by Gluck, strongly supporting the possibility of redeeming the French language for musical purposes. His achievement was eventually endorsed by none other than Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Gluck also traded on his former contacts with the daughter of Maria Theresa, Marie-Antoinette, who was now the dauphine. He had no difficulty in obtaining leave of absence from the empress, but despite being well established in Vienna he contemplated for a time a permanent settlement in Paris, and accepted Dauvergne's condition that he should write six operas (he eventually produced eight in France, of which four were revisions of works presented in Vienna). Gluck was generally admitted to have brought about a revolution in French opera, but his supremacy was never undisputed. Until his final return to Austria in 1779, motivated by fatigue, ill-health and disgust at journalistic and administrative intrigue, the periods he spent in Paris grew shorter, and those in Vienna longer.

Gluck reached Paris in November 1773, accompanied by his wife and his niece Marianne (Nanette), whose singing was admired in the more intimate gatherings offered by Parisian society. Early in 1774 the family moved into the house of Duke Christian IV of Zweibrücken. There they met the painter Mannlich, whose reminiscences of this period (C1934) provide vivid images of Gluck during the often turbulent rehearsals. Gluck had to drill the orchestra and chorus into playing an unaccustomed style of music; he also had considerable difficulties with the leading singers, notably Sophie Arnould (Iphigenia) and, despite his warm admiration for Gluck, Henri Larrivée (Agamemnon). Earlier attempts to reform French opera, by Philidor and Gossec, had been comparatively half-hearted. Arias perceived to be Italian in style (ariettes) were deployed during dramatic scenes, but the declamation prolonged the traditions of the post-Rameau generation. Gluck viewed French declamation with the experience of Italian opera, as well as opéra comique, behind him. Nevertheless it was probably his demand for dramatic verisimilitude as much as his style that caused difficulties and equally, in due course, was responsible for the success of his enterprise. Nearly all Gluck's Parisian ventures encountered hostility, and inspired correspondingly loyal and articulate support. Among the opposition in 1774 were supporters of traditional French opera, who began the pamphlet war which continued for the best part of a decade, and Louis XV's mistress Mme du Barry, who was instinctively opposed to the dauphine. Besides testimonials from Rousseau and Voltaire, Gluck received more substantial critical support from Abbé François Arnaud (see Lesure, C1984). The death of Louis XV interrupted performances of Iphigénie en Aulide before its success was fully assured. This allowed Gluck ample time to prepare the next stage in his campaign, the adaptation of Orfeo ed Euridice as Orphée, with the title role adapted for tenor (Joseph Legros). The additional ballets included some taken from Iphigénie en Aulide itself, and the famous flute solo known as ‘Dance of the Blessed Spirits’. The title role was extended by the virtuoso aria ‘L'espoir renaît dans mon âme’, which in 1776 Gluck was accused by C.-P. Coquéau in Entretiens sur l’état de l’Opéra de Paris (see Lesure, C1984) of having plagiarized from Ferdinando Bertoni (see Howard, A1995, p.202); and a trio ‘Tendre amour’ from Paride ed Elena signalled that Gluck would not adapt the latter for Paris.

After the triumphant première of Orphée, Gluck returned to Vienna in November 1774. He returned three weeks later to present a revised version of Iphigénie en Aulide, with substantial alterations to the ballets (which had been severely criticized) and a dénouement clarified by the appearance of the goddess Diana. The revised version of his opéra comique L'arbre enchanté, with additional text by the translator and librettist of Orphée, Pierre Louis Moline, was presented at Versailles. The success of Orphée and the revised Iphigénie en Aulide may have induced over-confidence in Gluck, for he allowed his next work for the Opéra, the revision of Favart's Cythère assiégée, to be performed without his immediate supervision; it may have been a tactical error, in Paris, to dismiss the final divertissement as ‘hors d'oeuvre’, albeit in a private letter to Kruthoffer, a phrase symptomatic of an attitude which was hardly a secret. Gluck returned to Vienna in March 1775, and was ill for much of the summer; news of the poor performance and reception of Cythère, supplied by his generally obliging factotum, Franz Kruthoffer, secretary to Count Mercy-Argenteau, was kept from him. Kruthoffer was also his intermediary in the often difficult negotiations with publishers. By the autumn, Gluck was well enough to work on the French version of Alceste. Because Roullet was back in Paris, he and Gluck exchanged letters concerning this revision, and also referring to an intention to compose Armide for 1777.

Gluck arrived in Paris in February 1776 to prepare Alceste, whose success mattered greatly following a loss of prestige with Cythère. The title role was taken by Rosalie Levasseur, chosen in preference to Arnould; Levasseur subsequently created the roles of Armida and Iphigenia in Iphigénie en Tauride. Alceste was coolly received at first, and further revisions were undertaken, involving a completely new dénouement with the introduction of a new character, Hercules. Gluck hurried back to Vienna in May on hearing the news of his niece's death (from smallpox), and did not return for nearly a year, by which time Alceste had begun to attract critical and public approval, although N.E. Framery, in the Mercure de France of September 1776, attempted a demolition of Alceste, with a further accusation of plagiarism, this time from Sacchini. On hearing that Piccinni had been engaged to compose Marmontel's adaptation of Quinault's Roland, Gluck claimed to have abandoned a setting of his own (but he was probably concentrating on Quinault's Armide). Characteristically seizing the chance to renew public interest, he sent a ‘confidential’ letter to Roullet, which was duly published in L'année littéraire (vii, 1776, 322–3; see Lesure, C1984), explaining his motives for abandoning Roland and condemning the practice of making critical comparisons between Orphée and Alceste, while advertising his progress on Armide.

During 1777 Piccinni was learning French declamation from Marmontel and composing Roland. Armide, in which Gluck made extensive use of material from earlier works including Don Juan and Telemaco, was produced in September. Except for omitting the prologue and adding a few lines for Armida to the end of Act 3, Gluck set Quinault's libretto with exceptional fidelity, in contrast to Marmontel's free adaptation of Roland. Yet Armide attracted the opposition of the remaining champions of Lully, whose operas were not yet entirely excluded from the repertory, as well as the venom of Jean François de La Harpe. Gluck responded with heavy irony in the Journal de Paris (12 October 1777), and enlisted the support of Jean Baptiste Antoine Suard, under the guise of ‘L'anonyme de Vaugirard’. Gluck remained to hear the successful première of Roland in January 1778, but spent most of that year in Vienna, working on his last two operas and negotiating, through Kruthoffer, Roullet and the librettist of Echo et Narcisse, Baron Ludwig Theodor von Tschudi, for a higher fee than was usual. The new director of the Opéra, A.P.J. de Vismes, was persuaded to come to terms following a failed revival of Rameau's Castor et Pollux, but he also offered an Iphigénie en Tauride libretto to Piccinni with the promise, subsequently broken, that it would appear before Gluck's.

The libretto of Gluck's Iphigénie en Tauride, founded on a tragedy of 1757 by Guymond de La Touche, may have been in part the work of Roullet, but was finally attributed to a younger librettist, Nicolas-François Guillard, who had first offered this text to Gossec. The composer's only letter to Guillard shows how Gluck controlled the overall shape of the work, as well as making specific and detailed demands, partly to accommodate the quantity of recycled music to which new words had to be fitted. Gluck also required additional material to enhance the characterization of the Scythian king Thoas, and ran Guillard's second and third acts together, so that Orestes' vision of his murdered mother's ghost merges with the entry of her daughter Iphigenia. These touches, which show Gluck at the height of his powers as a composer of lyric tragedy, make more surprising the effort he lavished on the pastoral. This ‘opéra d’été‘ (‘summer opera’, an epithet applied by Gluck himself, according to the Mémories secrets of 6 September 1779) Echo et Narcisse contains less borrowed material, although its strongest number, ‘Je ne puis m'ouvrir ta froide demeure’, is an incongruous reworking of a magnificient aria from Paride ed Elena, ‘Le belle immagini’.

Gluck was back in Paris at the end of 1778 to supervise productions of his new operas. Iphigénie en Tauride was an almost undisputed triumph, and its revival in 1781 was considered to defeat, if not quite eclipse, Piccinni's opera on the same subject. Gluck suffered his first stroke during the preparation of Echo et Narcisse, and the Opéra, which had paid him the record sum of 10,000 livres, suffered poor receipts, even for the revival. Gluck's reputation alone was not enough. In some disgust, he left Paris for the last time in October 1779, firmly resisting offers to return, although rumours of a new French opera persisted until the production of Salieri's Les Danaïdes.

Gluck, Christoph Willibald Ritter von