Iphigénie à Paris: Gluck and the Philosophes

Recent studies of Gluck's opera reform have emphasized the range and breadth of its sources, as well as the existence of comparable reform movements in both Parma and Stuttgart. Though a welcome reprieve from earlier writers' overemphasis on the influence of Rousseau in particular, such revisionist accounts nonetheless risk marginalizing the philosophes' contributions entirely. In so doing, they ignore Gluck's own careful cultivation of Rousseau and Diderot. By surveying Gluck's interactions with these two figures and their ideas, this article offers an implicit plea for the reintegration of the philosophes into reform opera's family tree.