Alceste, Wq. 37, is an opera by Christoph Willibald Gluck from 1767. The libretto was written by Ranieri de' Calzabigi and based on the play Alcestis by Euripides. The premiere took place on 26 December 1767 at the Burgtheater in Vienna.
Set design for Act III by François-Joseph Bélanger for the 1776 French-language première
Christoph Willibald Gluck
Christoph Willibald Gluck 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, he gained prominence at the Habsburg court at 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 recitative and cutting the usually long da capo aria. His later operas have half the length of a typical baroque opera.
Gluck playing his clavichord (1775), portrait by Joseph Duplessis
Statue of Gluck in Weidenwang
House in Erasbach, constructed in 1713 by Gluck's father, where many believe the composer was born.
Jezeří Castle