Gluck went to Paris in 1773, where the battle that was to fill his declining years with adventure was waged. One cannot help fancying that it was not altogether distasteful to this energetic, quick tempered, humorous, witty, politic, staunch master. A number of his new works were per formed, and in 1774, for the first time, " Iphigenia in Aulis." He became a hero. A night at the opera was so brilliant, so momentous, that exra police were detailed; Marie An toinette gave him her patronage; aristocratic gentlemen were flattered to help him on with his surtout or hand him his wig after a performance; he was granted a pension of six thousand livres, and the critics used no faint praise for his damnation.
But the way of the reformer is seldom a road in Arcady He was not to snap his fingers in the face of long-established conventions without causing trouble. The old had loyal sup porters. Many there were who called his work crude and untuneful, and said that it was absurd to put to music some of the things he did. They added to his discredit that dead liest of sins to a Frenchman, tiresomeness. These doubting Parisians were as bad as the Viennese who had dubbed his "Alceste " a " De Profundis." But the conservatives paid him the compliment to send to Italy for ammunition. This came back in the person of Niccola Piccini, the foremost composer of the day. For dramatic considerations, it is to be regretted that this cham pion and exponent of Italian opera was so small, mild man nered and unfailingly polite, a creature so sensitive that, when a child, the mere sight of a clavichord had made him faint with emotion, for otherwise we could witness with greater delight the assault of the big, bluff, sarcastic Gluck. Perhaps it is his compensation that, as a principal in this, the most picturesque contest in the history of music, his memory has been kept green, while otherwise it might be relegated to the oblivion which awaited his operas. To be fair, credit must be accorded to Piccini for the development of the operatic finale, in which remarkable effect was secured by uniting the various voices in rich harmony.
They performed their rival pieces and all Paris took sides. The war in America was forgotten. The whispered question was not " Whig or Tory?" It was " Gluckist or Piccinist? " And beware of the answer. Life long friend ships were sacrificed upon the altar of argument; all the wits and litterateurs were ranged, and bon mots were scat tered with prodigality. Dozens of them have come down for our delectation. There is no record of the actual spilling of blood, but no weapon can inflict such keen discomfort as the lash of sarcasm. It was a serious business and one who took a hand in it merely to be fashionable was likely to be sorry for it. This was the case with the Chevalier de Cas tellux, a gentleman not remarkable for mental equipment, who, when he attempted to discuss the matter with Gluck's admirer, the Marquis de Clermont, was discomfited by the reply, " I will sing you an air, and if you are capable of beating correct time to it, I will discuss Gluck with you."
There are many great names on the roster of this operatic war. Of the Gluckists, Marie Antoinette, who had been his pupil in Vienna; the Abbe Arnaud, Voltaire and Jean Jacques Rousseau; on the other side, Marmontel, La Harpe, Madame Du Barry, d'Alembert, Framery, Coqueau, some of whom figured tragically a little later in the greatest of all revolutions.
Although the Queen was at heart with Gluck, she made a laudable effort to be impartial. It was agreed that each should write an opera upon " Iphigenia in Tauris " and fight it out upon the same ground. Gluck's work was produced in 1779 and proved his masterpiece and the most satisfac tory exposition of his ideas. Piccini's appeared some time later and suffered sadly in comparison. Gluck, who had with him the spirit of the age, had won in the battle of the natural against the artificial.
It took a number of years for the world to learn that it was not sacrilege to smile within the precincts of the opera. The thought of mirth was far removed from the mighty business of the gods, which formed the almost inva riable subject of these works. Ordinary human life had never been reflected in any aspect. But mankind gropes after laughter as surely as the dawn follows the dark, and in the Eighteenth Century we find between the acts of serious operas, musical interludes in lighter vein, to afford the relax ation which the audience craved. These were evolved from the burlesques and puppet shows, which may in turn be traced to antiquity. It grew to be the custom for the same characters to figure in these intermezzi, and then it occurred to some one to unite them into one piece. It was done. Opera buffa had been originated and had been promoted to the rank of an independent institution. The people were more than consoled to have " Orpheus and Eurydice," " The seus and Ariadne," " Paris and Helen," replaced by the very people they might have known, whose emotions they could understand without any exercise of imagination; the saucy serving maid, the crusty old bachelor, the ringletted damsel with whom it would not be too difficult to fancy a flirtation. That opera buffa achieved a speedy and unqualified popular ity it is scarcely necessary to state, for it was the amusement of the people. Then, too, the monarchial sway of serious opera had been endangered by the conventional absurdities which had come to mar it. Providence was working in the usual mysterious way, and the abuses to which this musical form had been put led the people to take refuge in the new form as surely as they caused the reforms of Gluck.