It’s the best of good Gluck for Galway arts festival

The name of Christoph Willibald Gluck does not exactly trip off the tongue when opera revolutionaries are discussed. Not like, say Monteverdi or Wagner, but the German-born composer with the off-putting moniker made the move that changed opera forever – and even laid the foundation for the stage musicals we know today.

How he succeeded was to abandon the static opera seria style of Handel and co and replace them with operas in ...