ABSTRACT
When contemporaries began debating Gluck in 1774, they were aware that they were reopening a tradition of musical quarrels in France. Gluck's arrival coincides not only with revisions in structures of French musical patronage but also with a significant episode in its developing foreign policy. Recent research on Gluck has demonstrated that reform opera and cultural transfer deserve to be placed within the broad context of diplomatic relations between Versailles and Vienna since the so-called 'reversal of alliances', which opened up the possibility of more sustained cultural exchange between the two courts. Having considered the institution on the eve of Gluck's arrival it becomes clear that the cliche of an Opera systematically opposed to reform, offered polemically by d'Holbach and repeated for the following decades, cannot really be accepted. It we turn to the institution on the eve of Gluck's arrival, a similar situation of innovation may be observed.
