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Gluck did not make a success on his London visit, and began to criticise both his own work and contemporary schools of opera, with a thoroughness that resulted in a determination to "reform it altogether." From London he went to Vienna in 1748, and there he was soon a figure of importance, moving in the best families, and entertained at the best homes.

When the dwarf had finished his self-examination, he turned his small, sharp eyes full on Gluck, and stared at him deliberately for a minute or two. "No, it wouldn't, Gluck, my boy," said the little man. This was certainly rather an abrupt and unconnected mode of commencing conversation.

She dreamed of the days of her childhood: she saw herself again in Schonbrunn; she saw her teacher Gluck enter the blue music-room, in which she with her sisters used to wait for him; she saw the glowing countenance of her mother, the great Maria Theresa, entering her room, in order to give Gluck a proof of her high regard, and to announce to him herself that Marie Antoinette had betrothed herself to the Dauphin of France, and that she would soon bid her teacher farewell, in order to enter upon her new and brilliant career.

The whole of this little valley belonged to three brothers, called Schwartz, Hans, and Gluck. Schwartz and Hans, the two elder brothers, were very ugly men, with overhanging eyebrows and small, dull eyes which were always half shut, so that you couldn't see into THEM and always fancied they saw very far into YOU. They lived by farming the Treasure Valley, and very good farmers they were.

Leave the room, sir; and have the kindness to wait in the coal-cellar till I call you." Gluck left the room melancholy enough. The brothers ate as much mutton as they could, locked the rest in the cupboard, and proceeded to get very drunk after dinner. Such a night as it was! Howling wind, and rushing rain, without intermission.

She was buried near him, and her tomb, built by her nephew, has the following epitaph: "Here rests in peace, near her husband, Maria Anne, Edle von Gluck, born Pergin. She was a good Christian, and without ostentation a mother to the poor. She was loved and cherished by all who knew her."

It may be well here, while we are in the midst of opera composers, to take a glance at some of the predecessors of these men, beginning with the first of all opera composers, who, in his declaration of what opera should be and do, very curiously foreshadowed almost the exact words of Gluck and Wagner, revolutionists, who were really reactionists.

'Stratonice, a dignified setting of the pathetic old story of the prince who loves his father's betrothed, deserves to live if only for the sake of the noble air, 'Versez tous vos chagrins, a masterpiece of sublime tenderness as fine as anything in Gluck. 'Uthal, a work upon an Ossianic legend, has recently been revived with success in Germany.

Then Gluck took some bread in his basket, and the bottle of water, and set off very early for the mountains. If the glacier had occasioned a great deal of fatigue to his brothers, it was twenty times worse for him, who was neither so strong nor so practiced on the mountains. He had several very bad falls, lost his basket and bread, and was very much frightened at the strange noises under the ice.

There are singers who pretend to read music at sight; give them a score by Gluck "I beg your pardon," they will say, "my part is written here in the key of 'C' and I sing only in the key of 'G'!" How many men do not know even the key of 'G' in matters of love! Unfortunately for him, Bergenheim was one of that number.