5: The Last Operas and Retirement
Gluck had hoped to find fulfilment in Paris, and, at first, the audiences and critics there adored his work. He followed up his first great success with another opera based on a Greek myth - Iphigenie en Tauride. It turned out to be his last grand opera written in the reforming, naturalistic style that he had pioneered. Donald Macleod introduces excerpts from this work and from Gluck's last opera, the conservative pastoral, Echo et Narcisse. After these final efforts, Gluck abandoned the lyric stage in Paris and retired, ill and dispirited, back to Vienna in 1779.