Gluck - Alceste (full opera) Norman, Gedda, Krause, Weikl (1982)

Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714-1787) was a revolutionary operatic composer whose development of new sociological and musical ideas, whose reformation of the grand opera, and whose revitalization of ancient and early Florentine musical dramas epitomized classicism and the liberalism of the Age of Enlightenment. Gluck’s ultimate goal was to change opera from a trivial form of social entertainment into a true and naturalistic art form that expressed the dramaticism of the text. His ideas were preserved and admired by Cherubini, Salieri, Mozart, and Beethoven; his influence would even be apparent on later composers such as Weber and Wagner. Gluck wrote about Alceste, “I strove to lead music back to its true task, which is to support the poem in order to strengthen the expression of the feelings and the interest in the situations without interrupting the action. With regard to the arias and coloraturas, I wanted to ban all those misuses against which healthy common sense and true taste have fough