This illustrious representative of Italian opera in German was, it is true, beginning to be discussed. About 1760 another party, and a very zealous one, was formed in Vienna in opposition to Metastasio and Hasse. But who were its leaders? Raniero da Calsabigi of Leghorn—yet another Italian!—the librettist of Orfeo and Alceste; and Gluck—no less Italianate than Hasse, a pupil of Sammartini's in Milan, the author of two score dramatic works in the Italian style, who professed all his life, to write Italian operas.[1]—Such were the opposing
- ↑ Burney's portrait of Gluck is one of the best that we have of this great man.
Burney was introduced to him by the British Ambassador Extraordinary, Lord Stormont,—and the introduction was not superfluous, for "Gluck was of as fierce a temper as Händel, of whom we know that everyone was afraid. … He was living with his wife and a young niece, a remarkable musician. He was comfortably lodged in well-furnished rooms. … He was horribly scarred by small-pox. His face was ugly and he had an ugly scowl." But Burney had the good fortune to find him in "an unusually good temper. … Gluck sang. Although he had little voice he produced a great effect. With a wealth of accompaniment he combined energy, an impetuous fashion of dealing with the allegro passages, and a judicious expressiveness in the slow movements; in short, he so cleverly concealed what was defective in his voice that one forgot that he had none. He sang nearly all Alceste, several passages from Paris and Helen and a few airs from Racine's Iphigenia, which he had just finished writing. … He did all this from memory, without a single written note, with prodigious facility. He rose very late. It was his custom to write all night and rest in the morning."
Burney met him again at a dinner-party given by Lord Stormont. Gluck was his neighbour at table. Rendered expansive by the bumpers he had drained, Gluck confided to Burney that he had just received from the Elector Palatine a tun of excellent wine, in token of
after a quarter of an hour, as though I had known him a score of years." Burney, who "owed to his works a great part of the pleasure which music had afforded him since his childhood" compares him with Raphael, and likens his rival Gluck to Michel Angelo. And in truth there is hardly a more beautiful melodic pattern than Hasse's; only Mozart is perhaps his equal in this respect. The oblivion into which this admirable artist has fallen is one of the worst examples of historical injustice, and we shall endeavour some day to repair it.
