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 toward that result which he
afterward 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 Ave 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 fervor 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 nourished 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 _regime_. 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
untrammeled 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 worshiped alike duchess and
peasant. The Encyclopedists stimulated the ferment by their literary
enthusiasm, and the heartiness with which they cooperated 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 worshiping the beautiful ideals set up by the new
school, which were as far removed as possible from their own effete
civilization, did not realize 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.