Christoph Willibald Gluck

Opera in three acts by Christoph Willibald Gluck, Hector Berlioz's version (1859)

Rameau, Beethoven, Gluck...: beneath the gilded ceilings of the Château de Fontainebleau, a varied musical program spanning the centuries and reflecting the influence of the women who left their mark on this exceptional place.

The Belgian dancer and choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui interprets Glucks late Baroque opera Alceste as an impressive symbiosis between dance and music. The opera can be experienced here in all its existential power. (SZ) It is here performed in the revised Paris version from 1776 where Gluck has revalued especially the ballet music. Cherkaoui director of the Royal Ballet of Flanders has worked with top artists across disciplines like superstar Beyoncé. The superb dancers of the Belgian Compagnie Eastman, Antwerp perform Glucks score physically, creating a fine and stringent aesthetics of beautiful images (Opernwelt). Dorothea Röschmann with her inimitable charisma (Financial Times) and Charles Castronovo deliver a brilliant performance in the roles of the self-sacrificing royal couple. Musically impressive.

Hidden away in the heart of the Château de Fontainebleau, the Théâtre de l’Impératrice Eugénie is one of the most secret treasures of this jewel of French heritage. Closed to the public, this exceptional venue is reopening its doors for a concert given by Les Talens Lyrique and soprano Marie Lys.

Reimagine Christoph Willibald Gluck’s enduringly popular opera based on the famous Greek myth. From Lyric Opera of Chicago in collaboration with the Joffrey Ballet. Starring Dmitry Korchak, Andriana Chuchman and Lauren Snouffer.

Christoph Willibald Gluck's opera Alceste, based on Euripides' ancient Greek tragedy, tells the story of Queen Alceste of Thessaly. Alceste was performed at the Teatro Real de Madrid between February 27th to March 15th 2014.

A decade before the French Revolution, in a country riven with bitter polemics, Gluck throws the history of opera into confusion by raising it to an unheard-of peak of tragic intensity. Experiencing his two Iphigenias in a single evening goes beyond the norms of operatic life: it is to enter the very heart of the curse on the family of King Atreus of Mycenae, to follow a logical destiny through a cycle of endless violence. How does the victim of Aulis become the murderess of Tauris? That is the burning question that Dmitri Tcherniakov must adress, plunging the spectator into the midst of a household haunted by the dead and setting in train an implacable process of dehumanization, with parallels to our world today. Conducting Le Concert d’Astrée, Emmanuelle Haïm drives this dual tragedy to the summit of its expressive power, leaving humanity to be translated through arias of the utmost poignancy.

At death’s door, a beloved king is doomed unless someone takes his place. So then his wife resolves to sacrifice herself to save him. Christoph Willibald Gluck composed his reform opera Alceste not once, but twice. In La Fenice’s production of the lesser-known original Italian version, director Pier Luigi Pizzi strips the action down to the bare emotional drama of Alceste’s sacrifice.