ABSTRACT
At the end of May 1777, Christoph Willibald Gluck arrived in Paris to prepare his opera Armide for its premiere on 27 September. The JP paved its way with four laudatory articles in August and September, followed by two celebratory reviews. The power that Gluck held at the Opéra is apparent from the unusual conditions he stipulated: at least two months to train the singers and the authority to call as many rehearsals as he deemed necessary. There would be no understudy for any role and another opera had to be kept in complete readiness to perform in the event that any singer was incapacitated. This chapter chronicles Jean-François de La Harpe’s final attempt to focus the discussion on facts, to which the JP responded with a long series of lies and ridicule.
