As Wagner's controversial music-aesthetic theories began to appear in print in France, French critics quickly seized upon Gluck as an analogue. Comparisons between the two composers began to crop up as early as the 1850s, as many anti-Wagnerians sought evidence that the newer composer's supposedly groundbreaking theories were fundamentally derivative. Gluck, like Wagner, was an operatic reformer (but a successful one, in the eyes of many French critics) with a “système” of musical composition, and the eighteenth-century operatic reforms Gluck had proposed in his well-known preface to Alceste clearly demonstrated French superiority. On the other side of the fence, Wagner obviously viewed Gluck as a pivotal composer in opera history; in 1847 he had adapted Iphigénie en Aulide for a performance in Dresden, and he held the overture, in particular, in high esteem. As early as 1841, Wagner showered the work with praise in the French press in an article titled “De L'Ouverture” in La Revue et Gazette musicale de Paris (January 10, 14, and 17, 1841), where it served as his primary example for the dramatic capabilities of the opera overture.

Reviewing the 1861 revival of Gluck's Alceste, the music critic A. Thurner made a radical suggestion: the Paris Opéra, the pinnacle of French musical culture, “must be an operatic Louvre, where Classical works—alternating with our great modern productions—would provide the invigorating energy necessary to give shape to a new generation of composers and artists.” In Thurner's scenario, the Opéra—the Académie Nationale de Musique—would serve the same cultural role as the Louvre museum, the model institution for preserving historical masterpieces. His comparison of the Opéra and the Louvre is in many ways apt. Both had origins in the ancien régime and were state-run institutions dedicated to displaying French artistic achievements. Just as important, both aimed at demonstrating, as historian Jean-Pierre Babelon points out regarding the Louvre, “the centrality of the relationship between state power and the arts.” More specifically, in the words of art historians Carol Duncan and Alan Wallach, the Louvre “embodies the state and the ideology of the state … disguised in the spiritual forms of artistic genius.” Just as the Louvre was meant to house cultural treasures, the Opéra—followed closely by the Opéra-Comique, another state-subsidized theater founded with prerevolutionary origins—was the greatest stage in a nation obsessed with opera. As one early biographer of Camille Saint-Saëns wrote:

In chapters 2 and 3 we traced Mozart's gradual transition from a romantic composer to a classical figure—a restoration of his “original” state that accompanied his introduction into the Operatic Museum. This transition had a number of consequences for the way that audiences and critics understood the composer. Not only did stripping Mozart of his romantic veneer make his works challenging to Parisian audience members more accustomed to Wagner's or Massenet's theatrical language, it also raised a number of issues that Mozart's quasi-divinity had kept at bay. To put it another way, once the illusion of universality that had been attached to Don Juan was dispelled, audiences and critics were forced to situate the work in its geographical and chronological location, revealing the odd eighteenth-century Germanic composer lurking behind the mythology. In this chapter, I pick up some threads of French cultural identity running through Mozart's fin-de-siècle reception. As critics struggled to redefine Mozart and his historical position, they reflected the cultural preoccupations of their own time: in this case, larger issues of national identity, gender identity, and aesthetic priorities. We can begin this investigation with a look at perceptions of Mozart's Austro-German nationality, which proved a major stumbling block for those seeking to reconcile Mozart's position atop the musical canon with the idea of France's artistic superiority.

“It is beyond hope that we shall ever hear Castor et Pollux, Dardanus, or Zoroastre at the Opéra,” Félix Clément lamented in his 1885 Histoire de la musique. Not without good reason he believed that despite the unquestionable musical quality of Rameau's operas, they were too antiquated for modern audiences. After all, for most of the nineteenth century, Rameau had routinely been “cited as an archetype of musicians judged too antiquated to ever again be played.” The tragédie lyrique (before Gluck, at least) was entirely disconnected from fin-de-siècle expectations of opera, shaped by nineteenth-century French musical styles such as grand opéra to (post-)Wagnerian music dramas. The years between 1885 and 1908, however, convinced many critics, producers, and audiences that such a revival might be possible. For one thing, the Opéra-Comique (and occasionally the Opéra) had successfully produced Gluck's works since 1896—a feat that critics had initially thought impossible. And, of course, the theaters had more or less run out of Gluck operas to stage—the 1907 Iphigénie en Aulide had exhausted the supply of his French “masterwork” operas. By that time, the groundwork—most prominently concert performances and the Œuvres complètes—had been laid for a Rameau revival.

For Parisian critics and audiences of the fin de siècle, Gluck was without doubt one of the great luminaries of music history, a name worthy of mention alongside Mozart or Rameau. As a cornerstone of French music history, he was a crucial to establishing and interpreting narratives of France's musical past. But just as important was Gluck's central role in defining the nation's musical present and shaping its future; in addition to being touted by many critics as a model for French opera composers, he frequently served as a focal point for aesthetic debates. More than either of the other composers this book examines, Gluck's sudden revival and sustained popularity illustrated the Operatic Museum's potential to French audiences and critics, providing a concrete rather than hypothetical example of how works from France's past could connect with audiences and artistic trends of the present.

The reasons for the resurgence of Gluck's music were both manifold and complex, and every critic and composer had different reasons for supporting (or decrying) the composer. These positions often drew upon Gluck's earlier nineteenth-century reception, and so I begin this chapter with an overview of the composer's historical position. We can then turn to the Gluck revival that steadily gained momentum after the 1870s, focusing on two main sources of interest in his music: the Pelletan Edition of his “French” operas and the frequent performance of his music in Parisian concert series.