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Updated: May 19, 2025
Gluck's failure to please in London was, perhaps, an important epoch in his career. With a mind singularly sensitive to new impressions, and already struggling with fresh ideas in the laws of operatic composition, Handel's great music must have had a powerful effect in stimulating his unconscious progress.
"And never," exclaimed Calzabigi, grasping the extended hand of the composer, "never would the name of poor Calzabigi have been known, had Gluck not borne it along upon the pinions of his own fame. If the world calls me poet, it is because my poem has borrowed beauty from Gluck's celestial music." "Yes," said Gluck, laughing, "and if your poem fails, you will be equally indebted to Gluck's music.
Joy was what the author wanted and this does not give joy at all. Gluck's finale is regarded as not sufficiently distinguished, but this is wrong. The real finale was sung at Mézières and it was found that it was not at all common, but that its frank gaiety was in the best of taste.
The destruction was terrific, but it was only Gluck's overture. He played his flashes down the Mare Island shore, blowing up five torpedo boats, the torpedo station, and the great magazine at the eastern end of the island.
She struck a few chords, and in a low voice began to sing. Gradually her beautiful features lost their sadness, she seemed to forget herself and her sorrows, and to yield up her soul to the influence of Gluck's heavenly music. And now, with all the power, the melody, the pathos of her matchless voice, she sang, "Che faro senza Eurydice!" The more she sang, the brighter grew her lovely face.
"Gluck's consciousness of the merit of his own works, and of their dignity, excited no small jealousy, during the getting up of Armida, in his rival with the public, the great Vestris, to whom he scarcely left space to exhibit the graces of his art; and many severe disputes took place between the two rival sharers of the Parisian enthusiasm.
Gluck's whole life was illumined by an indomitable sense of his own strength, and lifted by it into an atmosphere high above that of his rivals, whom, the world has now almost forgotten, except as they were immortalized by being his enemies. Like Milton and Bacon, who put on record their knowledge that they had written for all time, Gluck had a magnificent consciousness of himself.
The day after this visit, when Gwen was singing to Adrian airs from Gluck's "Alceste," Irene and her father being both absent on Christmas business, social or charitable, the butler brought in a letter from Ruth Thrale in the very middle of a sostenuto note, for when did any servant, however intelligent, allow music to stop before proceeding to extremities? and said, respectfully but firmly, that it was the same boy, and he would wait.
"I am glad to hear it," said Kaunitz, with his usual composure, although he was inwardly annoyed at Gluck's complacency. "But as I promised the empress to see and hear every thing myself, I must hear and judge of your opera also. Be so good as to have it repeated." Gluck looked at the prince in amazement.
Five years elapsed between the production of 'Orfeo' and of Gluck's next great opera, 'Alceste'; but that these years were not wasted is proved by the great advance which is perceptible in the score of the later work. The libretto of 'Alceste' is in many ways superior to that of 'Orfeo, and Gluck's share of the work shows an incontestable improvement upon anything he had yet done.
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