The Vienna public received the opera with indifference, but the critics welcomed it eagerly as the inauguration of a new era. Unhappily the critics were not by any means competent judges; Sonnenfels and Riedel were not cultivated musical connoisseurs.[69] The opera scarcely reached a more extended circle; in Italy little notice was taken of it; Frederick the Great had several portions of it performed before him without finding any enjoyment in them;[70] North German
critics, while doing full justice to the new work, raised objections to some of the essential points of Gluck's principles, as carried out in it.[71] Gluck remarks with some resentment, in his dedication to "Paride ed Elena," on the lukewarmness of the public, and the want of insight and justice on the part of the critics; he goes on to blame the cowardice and stupidity of musicians, none of whom had ventured to follow his lead, and proudly declares his intention of maintaining his principles, to the correctness of which this new opera was to testify on altogether new grounds. This was an unlucky announcement, for "Paride ed Elena" gave no proof of Gluck's exceptional powers. The subject, a sufficiently poor one, is deprived of every vestige of interest by the interposition of Cupid in disguise between the lovers--a fiction which turns the whole drama into an absurdity. The meagre story is spun out into five acts, while to the love scenes, which are wanting in any true passion, independent choruses and dances are attached, calling for nothing beyond outward display. Gluck's genius for depicting the wider and deeper emotions found no task fitted to its powers, and the inclination to mere grace and superficiality was one altogether foreign to his nature. Beauties of detail do not suffice in the consideration of a work of art. The opera was a failure, however, and it does not appear to have been reproduced.
Perhaps Gluck would now have paused in his endeavours,[72] had not new prospects opened which seemed to promise good results. A Frenchman named Du Rollet, attached to the embassy at Vienna, and an enthusiast for poetry and music, asserted that the tendency of Gluck's principles was in essentials the same as that of French opera style. He therefore assured him that in Paris only would his