Christophe Willibald Gluck

(1714–1787)

Alceste

[Paris version 1776]

(performed in French)

• Alceste - Janet Baker
• Admète - Robert Tear
• Grand Prêtre d'Apollon - John Shirley-Quirk
• Evandre - Maldwyn Davies
• Un Héraut - Phillip Gelling
• Hercule - Jonathan Summers
• Apollon - Phillip Gelling
• La voix de l'Oracle - Matthew Best
• Dieu infernal - John Shirley-Quirk

Charles Mackerras conducting

Orchestra and Chorus of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden

LIVE Recording : 12 December 1981 performance at The Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London

Alceste, Wq. 37 (the later French version is Wq. 44), is an opera originally composed in 1767 to an Italian libretto written by Ranieri de' Calzabigi and based on the play Alcestis by Euripides. The premiere took place on 26 December 1767 at the Burgtheater in Vienna.

Gluck recomposed and lengthened Alceste to a French libretto by François-Louis Gand Le Bland Du Roullet for performances at the Paris Opera, retaining the three-act structure. Hercules was added as a pivotal character in Act III, as was a scene at the Gates of Hell. The premiere took place on 23 April 1776 in the second Salle du Palais-Royal.

With the Paris version, Alceste became an essentially new work, the translation from Italian to French necessitating several changes in the musical declamation of text, and certain scenes significantly reorganized to new or altered music. Some of the changes were made upon the advice of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, one of Gluck's greatest French admirers, but the bulk of the adaptation was the work of French aristocrat Du Roullet, with improvements by the composer.