Alceste

[aeolium]

I enjoyed the broadcast of Gluck's Alceste from the Vienna State Opera this afternoon, but was slightly puzzled at hearing what sounded like a prompter murmuring the first words of arias (and choruses) just before they were sung. Was this just me hearing things or were there really these extraneous sounds?

Anyway, it was good to hear this work and especially Véronique Gens in the title role. It's a work that doesn't deserve to be in the shadow of Orfeo ed Eurydice, imo.

[Flosshilde]

Damn - missed it.

[doversoul1]

No, I don’t think you are hearing things. There is (I am listening on iPlayer at the moment) an odd murmuring here and there although I wouldn’t have noticed if you hadn’t mentioned.

I was glad to see your post, as I was wondering if Gluck’s opera came under early music, even if Veronique Gens and the Freiburg definitely do.

I don’t know this opera at all but I find it difficult to connect the story with the setting like this. I know this happens all the time with Handel’s opera.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/galleries/p011636m

[aeolium]

I don’t know this opera at all but I find it difficult to connect the story with the setting like this. I know this happens all the time with Handel’s opera.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/galleries/p011636m

ds, the rule with productions of such operas is that they may never contain images that could have been conceived by the librettist and the composer All the better to listen to them on the radio....

I think of Gluck as early music though perhaps it would not have sounded like that when Maria Callas took the title role in her recording of Alceste nearly 60 years ago. The aria 'Divinités du Styx" is the best known from that work, but I had forgotten how much other good music there was, and drama within the music. It's possible to see why for the young Berlioz Gluck was the "Jove of our Olympus".

[David-G]

I am with Berlioz on this. Here is a nice quotation (and Berlioz was not young when he wrote this):

"There are two supreme gods in the art of music: Beethoven and Gluck. The former’s realm is that of infinite thought, the latter’s that of infinite passion; and though Beethoven is far above Gluck as a musician, there is so much of each in the other that these two Jupiters form a single god, and all we can do is to lose ourselves in admiration and respect for him."

The point of Gluck's major operas was drama, and in this he certainly succeeded. I certainly would not consider it "early music". After all, his idiom is not that different from Mozart.