Gluck: Don Juan

'Iphigenie en Aulide' was the opera with which Gluck set out to conquer the lyric stage in Paris in April 1774. France was the only country to resist the fashion for Italian opera that prevailed everywhere else in civilised Europe in the first half of the 18th century and to develop instead its own national form of serious opera, the tragedie lyrique. As an acknowledged master of theItalian manner, therefore, Gluck's appearance in Paris was bound to be controversial… He had a useful ally in Paris, however, in the person of the newly crowned young queen Marie Antoinette, who had previously, as an Austrian archduchess, been one of his singing pupils at the Viennese court, and could always quell dissent during the long and stormy rehearsals for the new opera by threatening to fetch the queen. In the event the opera was a great success and Gluck quickly became established as the new saviour of French opera, a worthy inheritor of the mantle of Lully and Rameau.