(born July 2, 1714, Erasbach, Upper Palatinate, Bavaria—died Nov. 15, 1787, Vienna, Austria) German opera composer. Son of a forester, he ran away to study music in Prague. He traveled widely, writing operas for various cities, before settling in 1750 in Vienna, where he would remain—except for an interlude in Paris (1773–79)—the rest of his life.
In 1762, with the librettist Ranieri di Calzabigi (1714–95), he wrote his famous opera Orfeo ed Euridice, in which he borrowed aspects of French opera to achieve a simplified dramatic style that decisively broke with the static and calcified Italian style. His preface to Alceste (1767) laid out the musico-dramatic principles of his “reform opera”; the goal was “simplicity, truth and naturalness.” In 1773 he moved to Paris, where his former pupil Marie-Antoinette was on the verge of becoming queen. There he won acclaim for Iphigénie en Aulide (1774), Armide (1777), and Iphigénie en Tauride (1779). His other operas (numbering more than 40 in all) include Paride ed Elena (1770) and Echo et Narcisse (1779). He also wrote five ballets, of which Don Juan (1761) was one of the first successful ballets d'action.
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