Christoph Willibald von Gluck

Christoph Willibald (Ritter von) Gluck (German: [ˈkʁɪstɔf ˈvɪlɪbalt ˈɡlʊk]; 2 July 1714 – 15 November 1787) was a composer of Italian and French opera in the early classical period. Born in the Upper Palatinate (now part of Germany) and raised in Bohemia, he gained prominence at the Habsburg court at Vienna, where he brought about the practical reform of opera's dramaturgical practices that many intellectuals had been campaigning for over the years. 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.

The strong influence of French opera in these works encouraged Gluck to move to Paris, which he did in November 1773. Fusing the traditions of Italian opera and the French national genre into a new synthesis, Gluck wrote eight operas for the Parisian stages. One of the last of these, Iphigénie en Tauride, 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 he left Paris in disgust and returned to Vienna to live out the remainder of his life.

Gluck was born on 2 July 1714 in Erasbach near Neumarkt (now a district of Berching, Bavaria). His father Alexander was a forester in Erasbach, and after 1717 head forester in Reichstadt (today Zákupy), Kreibitz (today Chřibská) and Eisenberg (today Jezeří), all in northern Bohemia. According to some biographers, it was here, in the middle of Lusatian Mountains, where 8-year-old Christoph received his first musical education at the Jesuit gymnasium in Komotau (today Chomutov). In 1727 the family moved to Eisenberg, where his father was admitted to the service of Prince Philip Hyazinth von Lobkowitz.

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