Christoph Willibald Gluck

Christoph Willibald Gluck was a German-born composer who worked for much of his career in Vienna for the Habsburg court. With the librettist Ranieri de' Calzabigi he wrote Orfeo ed Euridice of 1762 and Alceste of 1767, reforming opera seria by subordinating virtuoso display to drama and simple, expressive music. His later operas for Paris, such as Iphigénie en Tauride, influenced Mozart and the course of nineteenth-century opera.