ABSTRACT
This chapter turns to the context of the reform in Paris, and consider the position and strategy of the Opera in the early 1770s, before placing the reception of Iphigenie en Aulide and Orphee et Eurydice in the wider context of patriot critiques of aristocratic patronage in Paris. Although Jean Racine's Iphigenie was not given in the immediate run up to Gluck, it had been performed in 1772, while Du Roullet's preparatory letters were published in the Mercure, helpfully reminding spectators that Racine was the basis of the opera. From the beginning, the strategy of Du Roullet was to present Gluck as a combination between the heir of Antiquity and the future of French music. The role of court aristocrats in public concerts also explains a crossover between court and urban spheres, a simplistic binary that cannot explain divisions in Parisian musical taste.
