Luogo e data di registrazione		Forum am Schlosspark, Ludwigsburg (Germany) - 6/9 May 1991
	Registrazione: live / studio		studio
	Producer / Recording supervisor		Wolf Erichson
	Recording Engineer / Editing		Peter Laenger (Tritonus)
	Prima Edizione LP		-
	Prima Edizione CD		Sony / Vivarte - S2K 48 040 - (2 CDs) - durata 48' 52" & 34' 07" - (p) 1992 - DDD
	Cover Art		Scenery with Orfeo by Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665) - Archiv für Kunst und Geschichte, Berlin
	Note		-

A New Era in Opera "It seems to me that Gluck and Louis XVI are going to usher in a new epoch." This ecstatic eulogy on Christoph Willibald Gluck's artistic achievement came from no less a figure than Jean Jacques Rousseau: The French philosopher encapsulated in words what many contemporaries - both professional musicians and music-loving dilettantes - may well have felt after the première of the French version of Orfeo ed Euridice. This was underlined by the events which accompanied the further Paris premières which followed Orphée. This seemingly revolutionary innovation in music drama - which was always seen not just as a mere artistic spectacle, but also as a political statement - was interpreted and propagated by Gluck and his most important librettist Ranieri de' Calzabigi (1714-1795) as a great reforming feat. First of all Calzabigi and then Gluck himself never tired of proclaiming their own worth. The innovation of which Rousseau spoke and which applied to a variety of areas was to a certain extent in the air and generally felt to be actually overdue. Music theatre and the political regime were thought to parallel one another in a way which is very'difficult to understand today In pre-revolutionary Paris, in the days of Louis XVI, the supporters of a new form of music theatre were regarded as secret republicans. They automatically turned against the “Ancien Regime” and the form of opera which it favoured, the "tragedie lyrique", together with its representatives Lully and Rameau. And this was the camp in which Gluck established himself. For he had set out to reform the nature and musical language of opera. From a musico-historical point of view this was directed on the one hand at the unmistakeable stiffness of French opera, punctuated by ballets and with the plot contained in recitatives, and consequently rather deficient vocally; on the other hand Gluck thus attacked the traditional form of Italian opera, the “opera seria”, the dramaturgy of which, for all its undeniable, long-standing musical richness was regarded as narrow and implausible. This in turn was based on the dictates and models of the Imperial Court Poet in Vienna, Pietro Metastasio. Thus Gluck took on two enemies at the same time: the courtly French opera with its supposed musical inflexibility and neoclassical dramaturgy, mainly committed to convention and quite often to reasons of state, and at the same time Italian opera with its confused dramaturgy based on the never-changing pattern of all Metastasio operas, which did at least offer to the singers the opportunity to shine with bravura technique in extensive coloratura arias. The première in Vienna on October 5, 1762 of the azione teatrale Orfeo ed Euridice marked the first appearance on stage of a work in which Gluck's new operatic style was taken to its logical conclusion. It was reckoned to be rather a minor theatrical occasion in comparison with some of the great spectacular operas with many soloists, extensive choruses and ballets. Gluck had already tried out his new musical language in a ballet evening: almost exactly a year before Orfeo his Don Juan received its first performance at the Burgtheater. Thus in 1761 Gluck's cherished dream appeared to be fulfilled and a 20-year-long artistic qust to have reached its end. At the age of 27 he had produced his first opera (Artaserse) in Milan in 1741, based on a libretto by Metastasio. A great career appeared to lie before him, for Gluck had not merely defeated a number of highly regarded competitors, but also found himself, immediately after the appearance of his operatic first-born, in a position to fulfil a number of scritture - commissions to compose, rehearse and ronduct new operas. The all too familiar style of “opera seria” would therefore have continued if Gluck had not displayed clear signs of lack of enthusiasm. This reluctance showed itself in tardy fulfilment of contracts and eventually, after four years, he threw in the towel. There then began a search lasting many years for new ways to express himself. It lead the experienced seria composer right across Europe. The lirst stop was in England. The results of his short stay in London, from which Gluck had apparently had higher hopes, were a meeting and joint concert with Handel and two rather cobbled-together operas. There followed a period of travel. Gluck joined for a number of seasons a travelling opera company which journeyed far and wide, putting on opera perforniances in towns which had no court or municipal theatre within their walls. In this way he approached the place where he later found employment - Vienna. After many years as a freelance he took a job at the Burgtheater - in the lowliest possible position, as a musical arranger. Vienna's foreign policy was aligned with France. One result of this was that French theatre was fashionable. At the Burgtheater this meant arranging French comic operas to suit Viennese tastes and interspersing them with his own little compositions. That was just what Gluck did: having been on the point of making a European career as a composer of opera seria, he modestly applied himself to the task of creating mostly simple, indeed very simple ariettas and songs lasting a few minutes, in order to fit them into the imported material. One can scarcely imagine how great his antagonism to traditional opera must have been, that he should have been prepared to undertake such work in his search for something new. At last the opportunity came for which he must have yearned for so long: the artistically inclined impresario of the Burgtheater, Count Durazzo, was a strong supporter of Gluck. He was thus able, with a number of others of like mind, to put on a complete work in the new style, namely the ballet Don Juan, ou  le Festin de Pierre. This ballet about the “stone guest” was musically entirely new territory. The flow of the music was novel, quickly adapting itself to the ever changing situations of the plot, yet imbued with the clarity of expression which later became so typical of Gluck, based upon economy of orchestration and melodic simplicity. Gluck thus replaced the hitherto prevailing magnificence of the Court Opera. This was the Age of Enlightenment and Gluck gave musical expression to the “cri de la nature” demanded by Rousseau. A year later Gluck pursued his compositional ideals even more determinedly in Orfeo. The score no longer contains the coloratura passages so much favoured by the system of leading men and ladies; instead there were simple, folk-like melodies, which must have delighted Johann Gottfried Herder, Gluck's contemporary and a collector of folk songs. In place of extended da capo arias Gluck wrote for his Orfeo short ariettas which were seamlessly woven into the flow of the recitatives. The high points of the score are, however, still recognised as being the songs of the protagonist. Most of Gluck's contemporaries must have been amazed at this unexpected simplicity: that at least is implied by the few surviving accounts of the première. For example: “It is an entirely unusual play; I never saw anything like it. The action and the music are highly effective and induce a sadness which penetrates deep into the soul, making one submit completely to the poetry It seems that the composer, the celebrated Gluck, was concerned to produce a tragic masterpiece, in which he has certainly been successful.” Very early on experts appear to have correctly assessed the quality of the work - Rousseau's later judgment, delivered after the première of the Paris version, testifies to this. They were not troubled by the allegedly dark and gloomy atmosphere of the opera, the transparent orchestration of which, with its total lack of counterpoint, was well adapted to the required naturalness. Gluck himself described the new musical ideal as follows: “My music is only concerned to achieve the maximum expression and the reinforcement of the performance and the poetry. For this reason I make no use of trills, runs and cadenzas, with which the Italians are so profligate.” Later in life Gluck felt compelled, as a result of a quarrel with Calzabigi, with whom he broke off relations after collaborating on three works, to acknowledge his contribution to the new genre. Presumably he appreciated that his musical ideal could not be realised without a text of equal merit. His operatic reform would not have been possible with Metastasio's texts and flowery turns of phrase. The realisation of the new dramatic ideal required the application of the same logic in both text and music. Gluck himself said: “If I allowed the invention of the new Italian operatic style, the success of which has justified the experiment, to be attributed to me, I should reproach myself most severely. The main credit belongs to M. Calzabigi.” Rousseau's verdict on Orfeo was based on the successful 1774 première of the French version Orphée et Eurydice. Its most important characteristic is the adaptation of the original castrato role as a tenor part. In addition the part of Eurydice was significantly expanded and a number of ballets were added. Gluck took the best known of these, the Dance of the Furies, from his first reform work, the Don Juan ballet. One of Gluck's greatest admirers was Hector Berlioz. He used many examples from Gluck's scores for his treatise on orchestration. He also adapted Orfeo ed Euridice, or Orphée et Eurydice, thinking it necessary to make it more acceptable to current taste. The Vienna castrato version was impracticable for obvious reasons. He wanted to make use of the expanded part of Eurydice, but also to cut on dramatic grounds the many ballets,while retaining the celebrated Dance of the Furies. The result of his efforts was a patchwork in which the part of Orpheus was sung by a contralto. This is the version in which the opera has been performed far into our century, until the appearance of Gluck's collected works in the sixties again cleared the way for the original versions and therefore for the Vienna version of 1762 used on this recording. Nikolaus de Palézieux (Translation: © l992 Gery Bramall)