Gluck

Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714-1787) was one of the geniuses who shaped the development of musical art in the second half of the 18th century. Contemporaries believed that he had revolutionized music. Gluck's reform of the opera genre began with the touching love story - "Orpheus and Euridice" (1762) and culminated in the formidable and passionate tragedy "Iphigenia in Tauris" (1779). However, the path to reform was long and arduous: in his youth, Gluck served in princely chapels, worked in wandering troupes, and composed music for the celebrations of the Viennese court. His work was admired by emperors and princes, philosophers and poets, fashionable ladies and encyclopedic scholars.

The book by Professor Larisa Kirillina of the Moscow Conservatory tells the story of how the son of a forester from a remote Bavarian village, steadfastly following his calling, conquered Italy, Austria, and France, and by the end of his life became the idol of all enlightened Europe.