Today is the 300th birthday of Christoph Willibald Gluck, a composer concert promoters and marketers seem to have a hard time getting their heads around. Give them Verdi, Wagner or even Britten, and they’ll run with it. But Gluck? Who he?

Oh yeah. Isn’t he the guy who wrote the “Dance of the Blessed Spirits?”

We always hear about Gluck being a reformer, and in truth his influence on the future of opera was incalculable. He shunned floridity for its own sake. He was not a sensualist. He rebelled against the superficial effects of “opera seria,” with its showy arias ornamented beyond recognition by star castrati, to arrive at something closer to naturalism.

With Gluck, words and music bore equal weight. Drama was of the foremost importance. He tossed out the dry recitative to create a more continuous flow in the action. Performers took a back seat to emotional truth. The effect was kind of a chaste grandeur, simplicity at the service of theatrical power. Works like “Orfeo ed Euridice” and “Alceste” were radical for their time.

Gluck’s influence runs through Mozart to Weber, Berlioz and Wagner. Yet today his works are less frequently performed than those of any of his followers.

Be that as it may, the Friends of Christoph Willibald Gluck, situated in Bavaria near the composer’s birthplace, aren’t about to let the anniversary pass unnoticed.

http://www.gluckstadt-berching.de/

Find out more about Gluck in “Gluck the Reformer” (featuring John Eliot Gardiner, William Christie and others):

Happy 300th, C.W. Gluck!