Editing Opera (section)

====Gluck's reforms and Mozart====
{{listen|type=music
 | filename     = Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Don Giovanni - Overtüre.ogg
 | title        = Mozart K. 527
 | description  = Overture to ''[[Don Giovanni]]'' (1787)
}}
[[File:Gluck's Orphée - title page illustration (lightened and cropped).jpg|left|thumb|upright|Illustration for the score of the original Vienna version of ''[[Orfeo ed Euridice]]'']]
Opera seria had its weaknesses and critics. The taste for embellishment on behalf of the superbly trained singers, and the use of spectacle as a replacement for dramatic purity and unity drew attacks. [[Francesco Algarotti]]'s ''Essay on the Opera'' (1755) proved to be an inspiration for [[Christoph Willibald Gluck]]'s reforms. He advocated that ''opera seria'' had to return to basics and that all the various elements—music (both instrumental and vocal), [[ballet]], and staging—must be subservient to the overriding drama. In 1765 [[Melchior Grimm]] published "{{Lang|fr|Poème lyrique}}", an influential article for the [[Encyclopédie]] on [[lyric poetry|lyric]] and opera [[libretto]]s.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.larousse.fr/encyclopedie/musdico/Grimm/167991|work=Encyclopédie Larousse en ligne|title= Melchior baron de Grimm|access-date=|archive-date=7 April 2014|language = fr|url-status=live|archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20140407194934/http://www.larousse.fr/encyclopedie/musdico/Grimm/167991}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|title=Music and the Origins of Language: Theories from the French Enlightenment|first= Downing A|last= Thomas|page= 148|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=0zct2C3-jaAC&pg=PA148|isbn= 978-0-521-47307-1|date= 15 June 1995 |publisher= Cambridge University Press}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Heyer |first=John Hajdu |title=Lully Studies |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=JgrFMhZy3aAC&pg=PA248 |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |date=7 December 2000 |via=Google Books |isbn=978-0-521-62183-0}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=SqdTxG3jUNMC&pg=PA171|title=A History of Western Musical Aesthetics |first=Edward A.|last=Lippman|date=26 November 1992|publisher=U of Nebraska Press|via=Google Books|isbn=978-0-8032-7951-3}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url= http://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/music/research/proj/esf/pos/sem1.aspx |title=King's College London – Seminar 1|website=www.kcl.ac.uk|access-date=10 April 2014|archive-date=18 November 2018|archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20181118183917/https://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/music/research/proj/esf/pos/sem1.aspx |url-status=dead}}</ref> Several composers of the period, including [[Niccolò Jommelli]] and [[Tommaso Traetta]], attempted to put these ideals into practice. The first to succeed however, was Gluck. [[Christoph Willibald Gluck|Gluck]] strove to achieve a "beautiful simplicity". This is evident in his first reform opera, ''[[Orfeo ed Euridice]]'', where his non-virtuosic vocal melodies are supported by simple harmonies and a richer orchestra presence throughout.

Gluck's reforms have had resonance throughout operatic history. Weber, Mozart, and Wagner, in particular, were influenced by his ideals. Mozart, in many ways Gluck's successor, combined a superb sense of drama, harmony, melody, and counterpoint to write a series of comic operas with libretti by [[Lorenzo Da Ponte]], notably ''[[Le nozze di Figaro]]'', ''[[Don Giovanni]]'', and ''[[Così fan tutte]]'', which remain among the most-loved, popular and well-known operas. But Mozart's contribution to ''opera seria'' was more mixed; by his time it was dying away, and in spite of such fine works as ''[[Idomeneo]]'' and ''[[La clemenza di Tito]]'', he would not succeed in bringing the art form back to life again.<ref>''Man and Music: the Classical Era'', ed. [[Neal Zaslaw]] (Macmillan, 1989); entries on Gluck and Mozart in ''The Viking Opera Guide''.</ref>