It cannot be denied, therefore, that Gluck failed in the working out of his subjects, and that he sometimes betrays a certain amount of weakness as well in the structure of his compositions as in their details. It was not for want of industry or care; it was that he did not feel the necessity for mastering this important side of musical representation, and the fact affords fresh testimony of the singularity of his musical organisation.
Gluck's first opera, "Orfeo ed Euridice," adheres most closely to the usual Italian style, and was indeed successfully performed in Italy.[67] Of action in this opera there is hardly any; the introduction of Cupid at the beginning and the end gives it the cold allegorical character of the then customary festival entertainments. The broadly represented situations in which Orpheus mourns for Eurydice, and charms by his music the demons of the lower world, form the main portions of the opera; and they are expressed with striking fidelity and fervour of sentiment, as well as with great force and beauty. The use which is made of the chorus, and the cultivation of the orchestra, betoken great and important advances on the older style. The opera was well received by connoisseurs, both in Vienna and Paris,[68] but it does not appear to have been regarded as the inauguration of a reformation
in music; indeed, during the next few years Gluck composed several Italian operas quite after the old fashion.
"Alceste," however, is an avowed attempt towards a reformation of dramatic music, and it manifests the settled purpose and the complete individuality of the master. The poet offers nothing but a succession of situations without any progressive action; the situations turn exclusively on the decision of Alceste, and are employed less as psychological developments of character than as opportunities for a rhetorical representation of certain frames of mind. The character of Hercules is omitted, and the task of deliverance is entrusted to Apollo as an apparition in the clouds; this destroys an effective contrast; and the two confidants retain a suspicious likeness to the _parte seconde_ of Italian opera. But Gluck considered the separate scenes not only with regard to their fitness for musical treatment; he felt firm ground in which he might strike root. It testifies to his marvellous energy of mind that no weakness was discernible in the repetition of such closely allied situations, and that he had always new shades of expression and climacteric effects at his command. The connection with the forms of Italian opera is not by any means completely severed; an unprejudiced survey discovers numerous traces of this, and many of the main features of the composition are the results of the particular way in which Gluck made use of these forms.