Christoph Willibald Gluck was born in Erasbach—a small village in mid-Bavaria—on 2 July 1714. His father, a forester in the service of minor nobility, attempted to suppress his burgeoning interest in music, as a result of which Gluck left home in his early teens, living in Prague for almost a decade. In 1737 he moved to Italy, becoming a member of Prince Antonio Melzi’s private orchestra in Milan and studying for three years with the celebrated composer Sammartini. It was here that he composed his first opera, in 1741, and over the next twenty years he wrote a further eighteen operas, many for theatres in Italy but others for cities as diverse as Dresden, London and Copenhagen. During the 1760s he became—by luck as much as by design—one of the primary figures in the reform movement of opera, seeking to achieve dramatic and emotional verisimilitude by placing his music directly at the service of the text. This represented a conscious attempt to replace the florid vocal excesses of the late baroque with a return to the naturalistic and poetic origins of opera; as Gluck himself wrote, 'I sought to restrict music to its true purpose of expressing the poetry, and reinforcing the dramatic situation without interrupting the action or hampering it with superfluous embellishments.'

Paride ed Elena was the third and final collaboration between Gluck and the librettist Ranieri de’ Calzabigi, following Orfeo ed Euridice (1762) and Alceste (1767), and it was premiered at the Vienna Burgtheater on 3 November 1770. It was actually Calzabigi who was the main driving force behind many of the reforms for which Gluck became renowned, and the reforms themselves were not entirely new. They generally involved adopting French rather than Italian models, and included giving priority to the concept of the scene rather than individual numbers, the rejection of the ‘da capo’ arias beloved by Italian opera seria, the use of orchestral accompaniment throughout (rather than ‘secco’ recitative), and the rejection of empty virtuosity in the vocal writing.

Paride ed Elena has perhaps languished in the shadow of its two predecessors, and Gluck himself acknowledged that it lacked the 'tragic situations' of those operas, but it contains some exquisite music. According to Homer, it was the love of Paride (Paris), a Trojan, for Elena (Helen, wife of Menelaus of Sparta and allegedly the most beautiful woman in the world) that prompted the Trojan Wars. Gluck and Calzabigi’s opera disregards the political framework and presents a simple love story, focusing almost exclusively on the two main protagonists (as had also been the case in Orfeo ed Euridice). Gluck achieved musical variety by creating highly contrasted sound worlds between the Trojans and the Spartans, and between Paris’ ardent protestations of love and Helen’s coolness and severity.

At the beginning of the opera, Paris and his followers have just landed on the shore of Sparta, and in the aria O del mio dolce ardor he sings of his joy and relief that he can at last breathe the same air as Helen.

from notes by Ian Page © 2020

In the second of the opera’s five acts, set in a hall of the royal palace of Sparta, Paris finally meets Helen and presents her with gifts. There is an immediate chemistry between the couple, but Helen defensively feigns indifference. Left alone, Paris bemoans his apparent lack of success in the aria Le belle immagini d’un dolce amore, drawing comfort only from the fact that Venus, the Goddess of Love, has pledged her support to him. Gluck’s music is masterful in the way it simultaneously evokes Paris’ nobility and his fragility, his uncertainty and his constancy.

from notes by Ian Page © 2020