From Garrick to Gluck: Essays on Opera in the Age of Enlightenment. By Daniel Heartz and ed. by John A. Rice. pp. xvi + 335. Opera Series, 1. (Pendragon, Hillsdale, NY, 2004, $54. ISBN 1-57647-081-4.)

Abstract

Following publication of his immense volumes for Norton (Haydn, Mozart, and the Viennese School: 1740–1780 (1995), and Music in European Capitals: The Galant Style, 1720–1780 (2003)), this welcome compilation of Daniel Heartz’s essays on eighteenth-century opera complements the earlier Mozart’s Operas (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1990, edited, and with contributing essays, by Thomas Bauman). One volume within each pair has a title implying emphasis on composers favoured by posterity, notably Mozart; the other titles imply exploration of the environment of these and other composers, in literary, artistic, cultural, and social life. Like the Mozart opera volume, the essays are selected from a variety of sources. The earliest is the title essay, from 1967, while the most recent, a trenchant account of the significance of Grimm’s satirical essay Le Petit Prophète de Boehmischbroda, from 2001, has not previously been published. The title essay is justly celebrated, and is typical of Heartz’s lateral thinking, which has done so much to unearth connections and explain developments in the musical life of this period. Heartz traces the reputation of Garrick as a reforming actor, and the impression of English culture and thought upon Voltaire and Diderot, whose essay on poetic drama resonates so well—here is the characteristic Heartz touch—with contemporary concerns in the visual arts. This leads naturally to Noverre’s dramatic ballet and through him to Vienna, where his rival Angiolini collaborated with Calzabigi and Gluck and, in Orfeo ed Euridice, with Guadagni, whose time in London included not only a number of performances for Handel but also instruction in acting from Garrick. This perfectly formed argument is not circular, of course, but spiral: we return to Garrick to find ourselves far removed from where the discussion started, and on the cusp of an operatic reform that has never been forgotten.