C. W. von Gluck – W. A. Mozart
It is not a play, it is not an opera, it is not a symphonic poem, it is a “ballet of action”.
Combining dance, music and theatre, Gluck's work tells the story of DonJuan in some thirty choreographed orchestral numbers.
Little known, little performed, Gluck's DonJuan nevertheless laid the foundations for the reform of opera of which Gluck was the architect, provoking quarrels during his lifetime. Because he tried to “bring music back to its true role, which is to serve poetry through its expression and to follow the plot without interrupting the action”, Gluck also paved the way for the masterpiece that Mozart was to write twenty-five years later.
