Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714-1787) was a composer and opera reformer. His operas represent an end to the older style of the opera seria and the beginning of the modern music drama.

Christoph Willibald Gluck was born of German-Bohemian stock on July 2, 1714, at Erasbach in the Upper Palatinate. His father was a forester. In 1726, according to some sources, Gluck was sent to a Jesuit college where he received formal music lessons as part of his education. At the age of 19 he enrolled in the university in Prague, where he was also actively engaged in musical activities.

After a short stay in Vienna in 1736, Gluck went to Milan, where he was in the employ of the Melzi family from 1737 to 1739. At this time he studied with the composer Giovanni Battista Sammartini. In 1741 Gluck's first opera, Artaserse, after a libretto by Pietro Metastasio, was produced.

During the next 20 years Gluck pursued...