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La Cythère assiégée

Music by Christoph Willibald Gluck

Cythère assiégée (Cythera Besieged) is an opera by the composer Christoph Willibald Gluck.

The French-language libretto is by Charles-Simon Favart. The first version of this opera premiered in spring 1759 at the Burgtheater, Vienna in the form of a one-act opéra comique. A completely revised version turned it into a three-act opéra-ballet which appeared at the Paris Opéra on 1 August 1775. Gluck resorted to his eponymous opera comique (Vienna 1759) for the Parisian Cythère assiégée (1775) and transformed it into an opera ballet. He added recitative sections to Favarts's textual basis, re-designed sections and added his own compositions, some of them changing. His compositional works had progressed so far to the beginning of March 1775 that Gluck was able to leave a copy of the score on his departure from Paris; but neither could he supervise the rehearsal work nor be present at the premiere on 1 August 1775 or in the other 21 performances. Due to these circumstances, three versions of the work can be distinguished: the original, the listed and the printed.

Text from the Wikipedia article "La Cythère assiégée", licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.

About the Composer

Christoph Willibald Ritter von Gluck (; German: [ˈkʁɪstɔf ˈvɪlɪbalt ˈɡlʊk]; 2 July 1714 – 15 November 1787) was a composer of Italian and French opera in the early classical period. Born in the Upper Palatinate and raised in Bohemia, both part of the Holy Roman Empire at the time, he gained prominence at the Habsburg court in Vienna. There he brought about the practical reform of opera's dramaturgical practices for which many intellectuals had been campaigning. With a series of radical new works in the 1760s, among them Orfeo ed Euridice and Alceste, he broke the stranglehold that Metastasian opera seria had enjoyed for much of the century. Gluck introduced more drama by using orchestral…

Text from the Wikipedia article "Christoph Willibald Gluck", licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.

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Other Operas by Christoph Willibald Gluck