Alceste

Alceste is an opera in three acts with music by Christoph Willibald Gluck and a libretto originally in German by Raniero da Calzabigi. It had its world premiere in German at Vienna on 26 December 1767, but it was not heard in the French capital until a decade later, when Le Bailly du Roullet translated Calzabigi’s poem into French for the Paris premiere of the work before Gluck’s protectress, Marie-Antoinette, on 23 April 1776. Gluck and then Gossec revised the score of Alceste for its…