ABSTRACT
Further commentary from participants and observers clarifies some issues and provides a fuller picture of Christoph Willibald Gluck, while at the same time raising questions. In addition to ensuring the success of the first commercial daily paper in Paris, motives for the Gluckists’ attacks were the wealth, power, and fame that flowed from his domination at the Paris Opéra. Much later, both Jean-Baptiste-Antoine Suard and his biographer Dominique Joseph Garat acknowledged that wrongs were committed against the Piccinnists. Garat claimed that François Arnaud was the driving force behind the quarrel. The Gluckists’ misuse of the power and profit motive to attack innocent individuals in a vindictive manner explains the high passions aroused by the quarrel they incited. It was also an attack on the philosophes and their accomplishments. The Piccinnists’ struggle to be heard and for better performance standards eventually led to Paris becoming a leading European centre in the nineteenth century, though not without strong opposition along the way. After Niccolò Piccinni’s Roland, it became acceptable for the Opéra to stage Italian works.
