thumb|300px|right|Gluck, detail of a portrait by [LINK: [Joseph] Duplessis, dated 1775 (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna)] Christoph Willibald Ritter von Gluck (born 2 July 1714 Erasbach, Upper Palatinate; died 15 Nov 1787 in Vienna) was a composer of the 18th century, most noted for his operatic works. After many years at the Habsburg court at Vienna, Gluck brought about the practical reform of opera's dramaturgical practices that many intellectuals had been campaigning for over the years. With a series of radical new works in the 1760s, among them Orfeo ed Euridice and Alceste, he broke the stranglehold that Metastasian opera seria had enjoyed for much of the century. The strong influence of French opera in these works encouraged Gluck to move to Paris, which he did in November 1773. Fusing the traditions of Italian opera and the French national genre into a new synthesis, Gluck wrote eight ope

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