ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the celebrated reform of opera. On English stages David Garrick was perfecting a style of acting that broke sharply with the stately declamation and movement of the past. When Garrick reached Paris on his first trip in 1751 he soon fell in with all the prominent theatre people. Garrick began his long tenure as manager-director of Drury Lane in 1747. Garrick was novel above all in his powerful and varied use of gesture, an ability that particularly struck Continental admirers. In mid-century Paris the leading playwright was Voltaire, whose tragedies were considered superior to those of Corneille and equal to Racine's. To a Continental intellectual of the mid-eighteenth century as sensitive as Gluck, the 'English taste' meant something much wider than any single art. The operatic company at the King's Theatre, for which Gluck was engaged as musical director, extended its season until 24 June.
