Christoph Willibald Gluck Christoph Willibald Gluck artist page: interviews, features and/or performances archived at NPR Music

Christoph Willibald Gluck

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Talk Like An Opera Geek: Popping Opera's Bloated Bubble

Soprano Veronique Gens and tenor Joseph Kaiser star in a production of Gluck's Alceste at the 2010 Aix-en-Provence Festival. Anne-Christine Poujoulat/AFP/Getty Images hide caption

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Anne-Christine Poujoulat/AFP/Getty Images

Deceptive Cadence

Talk Like An Opera Geek: Popping Opera's Bloated Bubble

March 8, 2012 • The excesses of the early 18th century take a decisive hit from a reformer named Gluck.

Talk Like An Opera Geek: Managing Mezzos, Altos And Contraltos

Don't mix up your mezzos and contraltos. iStock hide caption

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Deceptive Cadence

Talk Like An Opera Geek: Managing Mezzos, Altos And Contraltos

November 16, 2011 • Learn to love our low-voiced lady opera singers who get to play everything from royalty to rivals.

Gluck's Successful Sequel: 'Iphigenie en Tauride'

Nadja Michael stars in Gluck's "Iphigenie en Tauride" from Theatre La Monnaie, in Brussels. Bernd Uhlig hide caption

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Bernd Uhlig

Concerts

Gluck's Successful Sequel: 'Iphigenie en Tauride'

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June 4, 2010 • Sequels in opera are rare. But in the 1770s, Christoph Willibald Gluck composed a pair of successful dramas that highlighted the hair-raising adventures of the young Iphigenia. She barely escapes death in one opera and nearly commits murder in another.

Hear An Introduction To The Opera

3:38

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Music

Gluck's 'Iphigenia in Aulis,' Marriage or Murder?

June 12, 2009 • Gluck's innovative and expressive drama tells the classic story of Agamemnon and his daughter Iphigenia, who comes to Aulis for a wedding only to find that her own father has offered her to the gods as a human sacrifice.

An Audio Introduction to the Opera

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Concerts

A Sane Sister: Gluck's 'Iphigenie En Tauride'

July 18, 2008 • Poor Iphigeneia. She comes from Greek drama's most dysfunctional family — matricide, patricide and madness. It's all in her past, but somehow she triumphs in Christoph Willibald Gluck's emotional drama, Iphigenie en Tauride, from the stage of the Paris Opéra.

Hear an audio introduction to 'Iphigenie en Tauride'

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