In 1748 Gluck settled in Vienna, where almost immediately his opera of
"Semiramide" was produced. Here he conceived a passion for Marianne,
the daughter of Joseph Pergin, a rich banker; but on account of the
father's distaste for a musical son-in-law, the marriage did not occur
till 1750. "Telemacco" and "Clemenza di Tito" were composed about this
time, and performed in Vienna, Rome, and Naples. In 1755 our composer
received the order of the Golden Spur from the Roman pontiff in
recognition of the merits of two operas performed at Rome, called "Il
Trionfo di Camillo" and "Antigono." Seven years were now actively
employed in producing operas for Vienna and Italian cities, which,
without possessing great value, show the change which had begun to
take place in this composer's theories of dramatic music. In Paris he
had been struck with the operas of Rameau, in which the declamatory
form was strongly marked. His early Italian training had fixed in his
mind the importance of pure melody. From Germany he obtained his
appreciation of harmony, and had made a deep study of the uses of the
orchestra. So we see this great reformer struggling on with many
faltering steps towards that result which he afterwards summed up in
the following concise description--"My purpose was to restrict music
to its true office, that of ministering to the expression of poetry,
without interrupting the action."
In Calzabigi Gluck had met an author who fully appreciated his ideas,
and had the talent of writing a libretto in accordance with them. This
coadjutor wrote all the librettos that belonged to Gluck's greatest
period. He had produced his "Orpheus and Eurydice" and "Alceste" in
Vienna with a fair amount of success; but his tastes drew him strongly
to the French stage, where the art of acting and declamation was
cultivated then, as it is now, to a height unknown in other parts of
Europe. So we find him gladly accepting an offer from the managers of
the French Opera to migrate to the great city, in which were
fermenting with much noisy fervour those new ideas in art, literature,
politics, and society, which were turning the eyes of all Europe to
the French capital.
The world's history has hardly a more picturesque and striking
spectacle, a period more fraught with the working of powerful forces,
than that exhibited by French society in the latter part of Louis
XV.'s reign. We see a court rotten to the core with indulgence in
every form of sensuality and vice, yet glittering with the veneer of a
social polish which made it the admiration of the world. A dissolute
king was ruled by a succession of mistresses, and all the courtiers
vied in emulating the vice and extravagance of their master. Yet in
this foul compost-heap art and literature flourished with a tropical
luxuriance. Voltaire was at the height of his splendid career, the
most brilliant wit and philosopher of his age. The lightnings of his
mockery attacked with an incessant play the social, political, and
religious shams of the period. People of all classes, under the
influence of his unsparing satire, were learning to see with clear
eyes what an utterly artificial and polluted age they lived in, and
the cement which bound society in a compact whole was fast melting
under this powerful solvent.
Rousseau, with his romantic philosophy and eloquence, had planted his
new ideas deep in the hearts of his contemporaries, weary with the
artifice and the corruption of a time which had exhausted itself and
had nothing to promise under the old social _régime_. The ideals
uplifted in the _Nouvelle Héloïse_ and the _Confessions_ awakened
men's minds with a great rebound to the charms of Nature, simplicity,
and a social order untrammelled by rules or conventions. The eloquence
with which these theories were propounded carried the French people by
storm, and Rousseau was a demigod at whose shrine worshipped alike
duchess and peasant. The Encyclopædists stimulated the ferment by
their literary enthusiasm, and the heartiness with which they
co-operated with the whole current of revolutionary thought.
The very atmosphere was reeking with the prophecy of imminent change.
Versailles itself did not escape the contagion. Courtiers and
aristocrats, in worshipping the beautiful ideals set up by the new
school, which were as far removed as possible from their own effete
civilisation, did not realise that they were playing with the fire
which was to burn out the whole social edifice of France with such a
terrible conflagration; for, back and beneath all this, there was a
people groaning under long centuries of accumulated wrong, in whose
imbruted hearts the theories applauded by their oppressors with a sort
of _doctrinaire_ delight were working with a fatal fever.