Soon he met Calzabigi, another librettist, with whom he wrote his first epoch-making opera _Orpheus and Euridice_. Although in some parts it is written like the older operas, he used many of his new ideas. The public at first were bewildered but they liked it. The next opera written with his new librettist was _Alceste_, so different was it, and so full of his best thought that the public did not like it. The pleasure-loving people went to be amused and heard music almost as serious as oratorio. It was austere, and its climax was not satisfactory. Yet it and _Orpheus and Euridice_ mark the birth of music drama which Mozart and Wagner developed further. In _Orpheus and Euridice_ the chorus was an important part of the drama as it had been in the old Greek drama from which Gluck took many of his stories; and was not something dragged in to fill up space. Instead, too, of the over-embroidered arias they were simple and expressive, and the characters were real living beings, instead of figures on which to drape showy melodies. Naturally, the composers were jealous of him and went so far as to say that the principal singer had written _Orpheus and Euridice_. Gluck said of his _Alceste_: “I seek to put music to its true purpose; that is, to support the poem, and thus to strengthen the expression of the feelings and the interest of the situation without interrupting the action.... In short, I have striven to abolish all those bad habits which sound reasoning and true taste have been struggling against now for so long in vain.” He abolished the unnecessary cadenza, a fancy, trilly part composed by the soloist himself and used just before the close of a piece. You will see in a later chapter how Beethoven dealt with it. Happily Gluck and Calzabigi still continued working together and in 1770 he wrote _Paride and Elena_ (Paris and Helen) which proved Gluck to be a writer of beautiful romantic song. By now Vienna and Paris were enthusiastic about him, yet he was severely criticized because he dared to write and compose differently from everyone else. The adventurer into new paths must always expect trouble from those who have not caught up with him. TROUBLE BREWS FOR GLUCK Now our traveler goes to Paris where he presents _Iphigenia in Aulis_. The story was taken from a play of the French dramatist Racine. Although this was the fourth work in Gluck’s new style it was not as good as the others. His enemies did their utmost to hurt him as they resented his coming into Paris to reform French opera. And as the musicians and singers were not good artists, it was almost impossible to give it well, and probably it would never have reached the stage had it not been for Marie Antoinette the French Queen who was later guillotined. She had been a real friend and pupil of Gluck, when a young princess in Vienna. Nevertheless the opera pleased its audiences, and it paid well, and Gluck was given a new court office in Vienna.