3. Vienna, 1752–60.

Although a position at the Habsburg court was not yet forthcoming, Gluck did soon secure employment in the Kapelle of a Viennese melomane, Prince Joseph Friedrich von Sachsen-Hildburghausen. Even before the composer's return to the capital in December, the prince had procured a copy of ‘Se mai senti’ from a Neapolitan correspondent and had it performed (by the Kammersängerin Therese Heinisch), and in due course Gluck was introduced to him. According to the memoirs of Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf (C1801), then a young violinist (Carl Ditters) in Hildburghausen's orchestra, Gluck soon became an intimate friend of the prince, not only on account of his musical skills, but also because the prince found him to be worldly and well-read. He appears also to have held a regular position in the prince's musical establishment; the semi-official Wienerisches Diarium referred to him as ‘Fürstl. Capell-meister’ in a report on musical festivities mounted by the prince in 1754 (‘Extra-Blat’, 12 October), but his arrival on the scene evidently did not displace Hildburghausen's nominal music director, Giuseppe Bonno. In any case, Dittersdorf reports that ‘At concerts [in the Palais Rofrano, later the Palais Auersperg], for which a rehearsal was always held the previous evening … Gluck sat himself with his violin at the head [of the orchestra]’. The soloists included not only the prince's regular employees, among whom were such accomplished musicians as Vittoria Tesi, the Semiramide of Gluck's last opera for Vienna, and the tenor Joseph Friebert, but also foreign visitors who had already appeared at court or in concerts in the Burgtheater – such as the soprano Caterina Gabrielli, the castrato Giovanni Manzuoli, the violinist Gaetano Pugnani and the oboist Alessandro Besozzi (ii). It was thus a natural transition when Gluck took up a position as musical director in the Burgtheater, with particular responsibility for concerts. According to Dittersdorf, ‘Gluck had many of his compositions, such as symphonies and arias, copied out for the prince’, and presumably he composed at least some new works for him as well.

The occasion that again brought Gluck to the attention of the imperial court was an elaborate feast of musical and theatrical entertainments put on by Hildburghausen over the course of several days in September 1754 at his estate of Schlosshof an der March, north-east of Vienna, which the empress was contemplating purchasing for her husband. (According to Dittersdorf, Gluck arrived on the scene as early as the middle of May.) Gluck had received a commission to compose one of the works to be performed there: a setting of the only comic piece now ascribed to Metastasio, Le cinesi, newly revised with a fourth, male role. (The work had originally been written in 1735 for Maria Theresa, her sister and a lady-in-waiting.) As a remedy for boredom, the Chinese women of the title, and the brother of one of them, perform samples or parodies of various dramatic genres – tragic, pastoral and comic – ending with an invitation to the dance, the whole leavened by Metastasio's gentle irony. With the added attraction of crystal and transparent décors in Chinese style by Giovanni Maria Quaglio (i), this was an ideal audition piece for the composer, who (like Bonno) was rewarded by the emperor with a golden snuff-box filled with 100 ducats. The work was repeated in the Burgtheater, and in 1761 was given in Russia (it was probably brought there by Joseph Starzer, whose sister Catharina had sung the role of Tangia).

The key personality in Gluck's recruitment for the Viennese Burgtheater was the director of spectacles at the court, the Genoan Count Giacomo Durazzo. Francophile in his artistic orientation, Durazzo had as a long-term ambition the uniting of French operatic spectacle with Italian lyricism and poetry, and probably brought Gluck into the Burgheater with this in mind. Initially, however, Gluck's duties were more mundane: from the third quarter of the 1755–6 season he is listed in court payment books as director of and composer for musical ‘academies’ (concerts), which took place principally during Lent, at a salary of 50, and later 100, ordinary ducats per year. From the start, however, he functioned as musical director of the French theatre generally, although payment records only made this explicit for his final season in that capacity (1763–4). During a dispute between Durazzo and the acting first Kapellmeister Georg Reutter (ii) in 1761, the count stated that he had chosen Gluck, as ‘someone he could trust and rely upon’, ‘to compose music for the theatre and for academies, and to be present at all musical productions that Count Durazzo may present’; the Obersthofmeister Corfix Ulfeld countered that his office had ‘had not the slightest news’ of Gluck's appointment as Kapellmeister six years before (see Haas, C1925). In any case, an additional duty was added in the spring of 1759 when, following the departure for Russia of the choreographer Franz Hilverding and his usual composer Starzer, Gluck was appointed as ‘Compositor von der Music zu denen Balletten’ in both the German and French theatres (later just the French), with additional compensation of 1000 gulden annually.

The Burgtheater into which Gluck came in 1755 had been thoroughly reorganized three years earlier under court control, and now featured a company of French actors (recruited with the aid of the imperial chancellor, Wenzel Kaunitz), plus a fine ballet troupe. The repertory consisted of classical and modern works of spoken drama, both tragic and comic, and Parisian opéras comiques adapted for Viennese tastes and morals; ballets were mostly presented as independent works between plays or operas, in part (as Durazzo explained) as a means of entertaining non-francophones in the audience. Occasional performances of Italian operas – mostly in connection with the birthdays, namedays, marriages and successful parturitions of members of the imperial family – drew upon these forces to a large extent, as well as upon soloists in the employ of the court. The latter were much reduced during the early stages of the Seven Years War, effectively silencing Italian opera at court.

Concerts in the Burgtheater were instituted by Durazzo in 1755, and the season was later expanded from Lent to cover other parts of the year (mostly Fridays), particularly after 1761, when the revenues went towards rebuilding the Kärntnertortheater. Large-scale oratorios, mostly on Metastasian texts, were the featured works, but operatic numbers (even entire operas), instrumental solos and concertos, symphonies and symphonies concertantes were also performed, by first-rate local or visiting artists. The orchestra, which Gluck's later librettist L.H. Dancourt found to be ‘sublime’, normally numbered six first and six second violins, plus pairs of violas, cellos and double basses, as well as oboes, one or two flutes, horns and bassoons, but could be augmented if needed (i.e. by extra strings, and by choristers and/or trumpeters from the Hofkapelle). (Late in 1761 Ditters, his two brothers and several other musicians from Hildburghausen's Kapelle were absorbed into the orchestra of the Burgtheater, when the prince had to return temporarily to his estate in Saxony.) During Lent, at least, musicians performed within elaborate, allegorical stage décors (described in the manuscript chronicle of Viennese theatrical offerings kept for Durazzo's benefit by Philipp Gumpenhuber, sous-directeur of the French ballet: C1758-63). Among the Gluck works performed were a setting of Psalm viii, his serenade Tetide and various ‘grands choeurs’. Although other composers such as Hasse and Wagenseil were more prominent on concert programmes, in his position as director Gluck was at the centre of Viennese musical life.

During the mid- and late 1750s Gluck received regular commissions for operas to be performed on court occasions: at first for Italian works involving virtuosos from the Tafelmusik, and when these had to be released because of wartime economies, for opéras comiques, several of which received their premières at the more intimate theatres at the Schönbrunn or Laxenburg palaces. La danza, given at the latter in May 1755, was a slight work on a decade-old Metastasian text, with but two singers, serving as an introduction to a pastoral ballet. But Gluck's next work, L'innocenza giustificata, given for the emperor's birthday on 8 December of the same year, was clearly a step in the direction of Durazzo's new model of Italian opera. Although the arias were all to well-known texts by Metastasio, Durazzo, acting as librettist, had placed them in a fluid context of recitatives and dramatic choruses, and linked them (in the French manner) to two ballets by Hilverding. In requesting a pension for Gluck in 1763, Durazzo mentioned this opera as the first for which he (as opposed to the court) had requested the composer's services.

Gluck's next commission, for a setting of Metastasio's Antigono, came from the Teatro Argentina in Rome, where pro-Habsburg circles may have been helpful to him – in particular the ‘Protector Germaniae’ in the papal court, Cardinal Albani. Gluck left Vienna immediately after the first performances of L'innocenza giustificata, but even so time was short before the première on 9 February 1756. This and the foreign venue may have been factors in Gluck's considerable recourse to borrowing in the work. The cast for this, the composer's only Roman opera, was necessarily all-male, owing to the prohibition on female actresses in the papal states. While in the Holy City Gluck was named a papal Knight of the Golden Spur, or cavaliere dello sperone d'oro, an honour bestowed on numerous artistic and literary figures of the time (including both Ditters and Mozart). Documentary proof of the award is lacking; indeed, doubts about its legitimacy were raised already in Gluck's lifetime. But Gerber (D1941) suggested that the nomination may have come from Albani himself, as cardinal legate; in any case, Gluck henceforth used the title proudly, signing himself ‘Chevalier Gluck’ or ‘Ritter Gluck’. While in Rome Gluck also had his portrait painted (though without the papal insignia); a copy of it was later ‘updated’ and sent by Durazzo to Padre Martini in Bologna (Croll, B1987).

Owing to wartime disruptions and his many duties in the Burgtheater, Gluck did not leave Vienna for the next few years. His new status as a papal knight seems to have increased his standing at court, and again in 1756 he was commissioned to write an opera for the emperor's birthday (8 December) – and, by happy coincidence, the birth of Archduke Maximilian – a setting of Metastasio's Il re pastore. Metastasio wrote to Farinelli that no opera could fail on such an auspicious occasion, but added caustically that the music was by ‘a Bohemian composer, whose spirit, noise and extravagance have supplied the place of merit in many theatres in Europe’ (letter of 8 December 1756, trans. in Burney, C1796). In resetting the libretto Gluck sought to imitate those features of Bonno's original version of 1751 – performed by amateur courtiers – that had pleased, including its vocal distribution of four sopranos and a tenor (Alexander), while taking advantage of the more agile throats of virtuosos such as Caterina Gabrielli (Elisa) and the castrato Ferdinando Mazzanti (Amyntas). Il re pastore was to be the last Italian serious opera presented at the Viennese court until the festivities for the wedding of Archduke Joseph in 1760.

Opéra comique came increasingly to occupy Gluck during the latter years of the decade. In 1755, when Gluck assumed his duties in the Burgtheater, Durazzo was beginning to import Parisian opéras comiques – both comedies in vaudevilles (retexted popular songs) and with parodied or newly written italianate ariettes – into the repertory of the French troupe. Gluck's skilful parody of French manners in one scene of Le cinesi made him an appropriate choice for the task of supervising the arrangement of imported Parisian works and occasionally contributing replacement ariettes suited to the limited abilities of singers in the company. His contributions to scores imported from Paris began at least as early as 1756, when an aria from L'innocenza giustificata was retexted and used in Charles-Simon Favart's Tircis et Doristée (itself a parody of Lully's Acis et Galatée), with its melodic leaps expanded by octave transposition so as to depict the strides of the giant Horiphême. By 1758, though, he was composing complete original scores in the genre – a task more worthy of his talents, according to his later collaborator L.H. Dancourt. A correspondent reporting on his first opéra comique score (La fausse esclave, première on 8 January 1758) in the Liège-based Journal encyclopédique of 1 March 1758 put them squarely in the context of the polemic over this genre then being fought by Rousseau and others in the French capital, writing presciently that

after the success of this piece, it would be desirable that the music of the able composer be played in Paris, so that one might judge if in this first attempt he has managed to conserve all the truth of expression in the French words, while giving them, as he has done, all the brilliance of Italian music in the accompaniments.

Gluck's second opéra comique, L'île de Merlin, ou Le monde renversé, given at Schönbrunn on 3 October 1758 in anticipation of the emperor's nameday, was a resetting of a classic piece of social satire from the early days of the genre. As in La fausse esclave, Gluck replaced only a portion of the many original vaudevilles, and wrote suitably epigrammatic and dance-like airs nouveaux to blend in with them. A belated review in the Journal encyclopédique (15 December 1759) noted that this fairground entertainment had, through judicious cutting, been made suitable for presentation before the court; 20 years later Gluck reworked the overture, with its vivid storm music, in the first scene of Iphigénie en Tauride.

The next year Durazzo acquired the services (by correspondence) of the opéra comique librettist Favart, in order to keep abreast of Parisian taste, repertory and opportunities for recruitment of personnel – not only for opéra comique, but also with the impending wedding festivities of Archduke Joseph in mind. A collaboration between Gluck and Favart was discussed, and the composer did set Favart's Cythère assiégée in 1759, but the two did not directly work together until they revised the opera into an opera-ballet in Paris in 1775. 1759 was the highpoint of Gluck's activity in the genre of opéra comique, seeing the production of three very different works. For Le diable à quatre (given in May at Laxenburg), a quite bawdy piece of English origin, he wrote new accompaniments for the parodied Italian ariettes from the Parisian version of the piece, as well as several airs nouveaux, one of which Haydn took as the main theme of the first movement of his Symphony no.8, ‘Le soir’ (Heartz, H1981). L'arbre enchanté, another nameday offering for Emperor Francis Stephen, was a pastoral piece of modest proportions, based on a tale of Boccaccio by way of La Fontaine. (When during a performance of the opera in 1761 one of the singers became ill, a spectator, Count Zinzendorf, noted that Gluck himself sang the rest of his part from the wings.) The date of the première of Cythère assiégée is not known, but it was probably in spring 1759, and certainly after the start of Gluck's activity as a ballet composer (replacing Starzer). In terms of resources this was the most ambitious of Gluck's opéras comiques, involving large choruses (60-strong, by one account), elaborate concertante writing for voices and instruments and numerous dances integrated into the spectacle. Gluck's skill in setting French is notably improved in this opera, as is also his control over the large-scale musical structure.

Gluck's early ballets, many of which are preserved anonymously at the former Schwarzenberg archive at Český Krumlov, have yet to be studied in detail, and attributions are mostly tentative. (As functional, repertory works, they were produced without much regard to publicizing the composer's role.) But Les amours de Flore et Zéphire (to choreography by Gasparo Angiolini; fig.2), from August 1759, already exhibits a firm mastery of the fluid, gestural writing for pantomime typical of his later, better-known ballets, as well as imaginative handling of textures. Another pre-Don Juan work, La halte des Calmouckes of March 1761, is notable on account of Gluck's use of a figure in polonaise rhythm in its sinfonia and each of its ten movements. The composer's regular involvement with the writing, rehearsing and performance of ballet music, along with his work in opéra comique, constituted an essential part of his training for the sort of spectacle that Durazzo envisaged for Italian opera.

During 1760 Gluck produced numerous repertory ballets, and one further opéra comique, L'ivrogne corrigé, probably late in the year (see Brown, E1991). This work, again derived from La Fontaine, demonstrates careful structural planning on the part of the composer and features a mock-hell scene that looks forward to Orfeo ed Euridice. 1760 also saw the reintroduction of Italian serious opera, as an essential part of the entertainments offered for the October wedding of Archduke Joseph to Isabella of Parma (a granddaughter of Louis XV), through which the Habsburg alliance with the Bourbon dynasty was sealed. The commission for the main wedding opera, Alcide al bivio, on a text by Metastasio, went to Hasse, apparently with Durazzo's acquiescence (he may even have had a role in its genesis), while Gluck was given the secondary work, the serenata Tetide, on a text by the Dresden-based poet G.A. Migliavacca. Gluck's work was performed on 10 October in the large Redoutensaal of the Hofburg, without dramatic action, but in an elaborate stage decoration representing the palace of the aquatic goddess Thetis, created by G.N. Servandoni, who had been brought from Paris for the purpose by Durazzo. Gluck's score for this thoroughly allegorical work included much acrobatic writing for the virtuoso singers (Gabrielli and Manzuoli, among others), but also numbers more redolent of the French comic operas that the composer had been writing for the Viennese French troupe. Both operas were given again in 1761, in the Lenten concerts in the Burgtheater.

During this same period preparations were under way for Durazzo's own operatic project, an Armida based on Quinault, versified by Migliavacca and set to music by Tommaso Traetta, of the francophile court of Parma. But just as the work reached the stage, on 3 January 1761 (the birthday of Isabella), Durazzo found himself embroiled in a bitter dispute with Reutter over his use of Gluck. Reutter objected to (among other things) Gluck's involvement in the court Tafelmusik, which was his prerogative, and Durazzo's habit of draining off musicians from the Hofkapelle for theatrical service. Durazzo and his protégé Gluck were considerably chastened by the episode, paradoxically, just as they were to enter upon the most fruitful period of their collaboration.

Gluck, Christoph Willibald Ritter von