'Echo et Narcisse,' an opera cast in a somewhat lighter mould, which was produced in 1779, seems to have failed to please, and 'Iphigenie en Tauride' may be safely taken as the climax of Gluck's career. It is the happiest example of his peculiar power, and shows more convincingly than any of its predecessors where the secret of his greatness really lay. He was the first composer who treated an opera as an integral whole. He was inferior to many of his predecessors, notably to Handel, in musical science, and even in power of characterisation. But while their works were often hardly more than strings of detached scenes from which the airs might often be dissociated without much loss of effect, his operas were constructed upon a principle of dramatic unity which forbade one link to be taken from the chain without injuring the continuity of the whole. In purely technical matters, too, his reforms were far-reaching and important. He was first to make the overture in some sort a reflection of the drama which it preceded, and he used orchestral effects as a means of expressing the passion of his characters in a way that had not been dreamed of before. He dismissed the harpsichord from the orchestra, and strengthened his band with clarinets, an instrument unknown to Handel. His banishment of _recitativo secco_, and his restoration of the chorus to its proper place in the drama, were innovations of vast importance to the history of opera, but the chief strength of the influence which he exerted upon subsequent music lay in his power of suffusing each of his operas in an atmosphere special to itself. CHAPTER III OPERA BUFFA, OPERA COMIQUE, AND SINGSPIEL PERGOLESI--ROUSSEAU--MONSIGNY--GRETRY-- CIMAROSA--HILLER