Gluck, Christoph Willibald, (1714-1787)

enquiring when the score of his opera Alceste will be ready, noting that he has heard of Noverre's engagement at the Opéra, expressing his wish to have his ballet opera Cythère assiégée revived the following year, which he does not doubt will be successful with some specially-composed dances, mentioning how he laughed concerning an anecdote about Mlle. Arnoud, recalling his assertion that Alceste will make a great and lasting impression only when the public learn to understand the piece, comparing Alceste with his opera Armide, and noting that it will be difficult for the latter work to compete with the former as its 'poem' is not as vigorous, and also because it has so many episodes; in the last part of the letter Gluck discusses Janson's subscription plans, observing that if he has deserved this honour, it is not so much on account of the good music, for much good music had been written before his time and will come after him too, but because of the way the opera was produced and the work of the actors and actresses ("...sie werden sich wiessen zu Erinnern, das ich allezeit gesagt habe: wan das publicum Ein mahl Alceste begreiffen wierd, so wierd diese piece Einen grossen, und langwierigen Eindruck machen...")

2 pages, 4to (23 x 18.5cm), integral blank, "C & I Honig" paper, annotated by the recipient ("beant: Paris am 17.^ten 7ber 1776."), guard to verso of integral, Vienna, August 29, [1776]

Wilhelm Heyer collection in Cologne; Alfred C. Meyer (Chicago), his sale Parke-Bernet, New York, 30 November 1943, Lot 133 ($120); Galerie St Etienne; acquired 26 September 1945

 

Georg Kinsky (ed.), Glucks Briefe an Franz Kruthoffer (1927) 7 (pp. 21-23); TNG, x, pp. 24ff.

Condition is described in the main body of the cataloguing, where appropriate
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A SPLENDID LETTER DISCUSSING TWO OF GLUCK'S GREATEST OPERATIC WORKS, ALCESTE AND ARMIDE.

For the last three decades of his life Gluck was the perhaps world's most famous living composer, celebrated in particular for his operatic reforms, bringing music to the service of the drama. Alceste, originally composed for Vienna with Italian words, in 1767, was one of the composer's most important operas. The French version was given at the Académie Royale de Musique on 23 April 1776, and has remained the one generally performed, despite its initial cool reception. His Armide, which Gluck mentions here for the first time and revealingly compares with Alceste, was written for Paris the following year, in 1777. The composer's hopes, however, to revive his originally relatively unsuccessful ballet opera Cythère assiégée, with new dances replacing those provided by Pierre Berton in 1775 for the second version of the piece, came to nothing.

Franz Kruthoffer (1740-c.1815) was private secretary to the Austrian ambassador in Paris, and an important mediator of Gluck's business affairs in the French capital during the period 1775 to 1783. It was through Kruthoffer's efforts that Alceste had been accepted for publication by the Bureau d'Abonnement in 1776. In addition to the great ballet-master Jean-Georges Noverre (1727-1810), Gluck also mentions in the letter the soprano Madeleine Sophie Arnould (1744-1802), who was Gluck's first Iphgénie and Eurydice, and the violoncellist Jean Baptiste Aimé Joseph Janson (1742-1803), who undertook a concert tour to Vienna in 1779.