Christoph Willibald Ritter von Gluck was born 2nd July 1714 Erasbachthe, Upper Palatinate the first of 6 surviving children. Noted mostly for his operatic works and was also a great teacher. 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. At about 14 he left home to study in Prague at this time the University boasted a flourishing musical scene, in music he was essentially self-taught, and supported himself as organist at the Tyn Church. He moved to Vienna in 1735 and then to Milan, where his first opera Artasers was given, the success of this ensured numerous commissions that took him all over Europe, Venice, Dresden, Copenhagen, Naples, London. In 1750 for the Prague Carnival Gluck composed a new opera, Ezio and the same year on 15th September he married Maria Anna Bergin, aged 18 years old, the daughter of a long-dead rich Viennese merchant. The marriage brought Gluck financial security and close ties to the imperial court. From 1752 until the 1770s he lived mostly in Vienna, where his first employment was as Konzertmeister in the court of the imperial field marshal Prince Joseph Friedrich Wilhelm of Saxe-Hildburghausen. Gluck moved to Paris in November 1773. Fusing the traditions of Italian opera and the French national genre into a new synthesis, Gluck wrote eight operas for the Parisian stages. Iphig