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With the exception of one only, all the works of GLUCK have remained as stock-pieces, and are played from time to time. They are five in number; namely, Iphigenie en Aulide, Iphigenie en Tauride, Orphee et Euridice, Armide, and Alceste. That which could not maintain its ground, and consequently fell, was Narcisse.
Indeed, farcical to the broadest point as was that mythological travesty of "The Danaïdes," it was the essence of decency and propriety compared with "La grande Duchesse," "La belle Hélène," "Orphée aux Enfers," "La Biche au Bois," "Le petit Faust," and all the vile succession of indecencies and immoralities that the female good society of England in these latter years has delighted in witnessing, without the help of the mask which enabled their great-grandmothers to sit out the plays of Wycherley, Congreve, and Farquhar, chaste and decorous in their crude coarseness compared with the French operatic burlesques of the present day.
His choice for the opening work was Orphée, which requires only three principals, Orpheus, Eurydice, and Love. It has become the custom to add a fourth, a Happy Spirit, but this spirit is one of Carvalho's inventions and has no reason for existence. There are, however, two Orphée. The first is Orfeo which was written in Italian, on Calzabigi's text, and was first presented at Venice in 1761.
Let them go to the orchestra and hear Le Nozze di Figaro, Obéron, Freischutz and Orphée ... we are doing something for them by placing such models before them. The young composers who were thus politely invited to be seated included, among others, Bizet, Delibes, Massenet, and the writer of these lines. Massenet and I would have been satisfied with writing a ballet for the Opéra.
While she was giving a spectacular revival of Orphée aux Enfers, he wrote Les Bavards for her. He was inspired by the hope of an unusual interpretation and he so surpassed himself that he produced a small masterpiece. A revival of this work would certainly be successful if that were possible, but the peculiar merits of the creatrix of the rôle would be necessary and I do not see her like anywhere.
The friend of Alfred de Musset, the model for George Sand's "Consuelo," the "creator" of Fidès in Le Prophète, and the singer who, in the revival of Orphée at the Théâtre Lyrique in 1859, resuscitated Gluck's popularity in Paris, retired from the opera stage in 1863 at the age of 43, shortly after she had appeared in Alceste! His very delightful letters to her have been published.
Love accomplished this miracle and the work ended with the song "Love Triumphs," which is exceedingly joyful and in harmony with the situation. They did not want this ending, which was in Orfeo and which Gluck retained in Orphée, at the old Théâtre-Lyrique and the Opéra-Comique, and they replaced it with a chorus by Echo and Narcissus. This chorus is charming, but that does not excuse it.
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