Armide is anopera byChristoph Willibald Gluck, set to alibretto byPhilippe Quinault. Gluck's fifth production for the Parisian stage and the composer's own favourite among his works, it was first performed on 23 September 1777 by theAcadémie Royale de Musique in the secondSalle du Palais-Royal in Paris.

Gluck set the same librettoPhilippe Quinault had written forLully in 1686, based onTorquato Tasso'sGerusalemme liberata (Jerusalem Delivered). Gluck seemed at ease in facing French traditions head-on when he composedArmide. Lully and Quinault were the very founders of serious opera in France andArmide was generally recognized as their masterpiece, so it was a bold move on Gluck's part to write new music to Quinault's words. A similar attempt to write a new opera to the libretto ofThésée byJean-Joseph de Mondonville in 1765 had ended in disaster, with audiences demanding it be replaced by Lully's original. By utilizingArmide, Gluck challenged the long-standing and apparently inviolable ideals of French practice, and in the process he revealed these values capable of renewal through "modern" compositional sensitivities. Critical response and resultant polemic resulted in one of those grand imbroglios common to French intellectual life. Gluck struck a nerve in French sensitivities, and whereasArmide was not one of his more popular works, it remained a critical touchstone in the French operatic tradition and was warmly praised byBerlioz in hisMemoirs. Gluck also set a minor fashion for resetting Lully/Quinault operas: Gluck's rivalPiccinni followed his example withRoland in 1778 andAtys in 1780; in the same year,Philidor produced a newPersée; andGossec offered his version ofThésée in 1782. Gluck himself is said to have been working on an opera based onRoland, but he abandoned it when he heard Piccinni had taken on the same libretto.

Armide remained on the repertoire of the ParisianAcadémie Nationale de Musique throughout the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, with revivals held in 1805, 1811, 1818, 1819 and 1825. A new production directed by Émile Perrin in 1866 featured sets byÉdouard Desplechin (Act II),Auguste Alfred Rubé andPhilippe Chaperon (Act III), andCharles-Antoine Cambon (Acts IV and V). Another big-budget production was staged at the Opéra on 12 April 1905, starringLucienne Bréval in the title role,Alice Verlet,Agustarello Affre,Dinh Gilly, andGeneviève Vix.^[1] The costumes were designed by Charles Bianchini and Charles Bétout; the sets were by Cambon's studentEugène Carpezat (Act I), Amable (Acts II and V), and Marcel Jambon and Alexandre Bailly (Acts III and IV).

The Opéra's 1905 production was followed on 7 November 1905 by a big-budget staging at theThéâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels. Overseen by Gluck connoisseurFrançois-Auguste Gevaert, it featuredFélia Litvinne in the title role, costumes by the symbolist artistFernand Khnopff, and eight sets by Albert Dubosq. Hugely successful, this sumptuous production enjoyed a first run of forty performances, with subsequent revivals in 1909, 1924 and 1948.

TheMetropolitan Opera staged the work for the opening of its 1910–1911 season.Toscanini conducted a cast led byOlive Fremstad,Louise Homer andEnrico Caruso.^[2]

For the storyline, seeArmide byLully. Gluck kept the libretto unchanged, although he cut the allegorical prologue and added a few lines of his own devising to the end of Act Three. Similarly, the roles and the disposition of the voices are the same as in Lully's opera.

• Audio conducted by Rossi, with McKnight/Gardino/Picchi/Mollet (Melodram, recorded live in Torino in 1958)
• Armide (Felicity Palmer), Renaud (Anthony Rolfe Johnson), La Haine (Linda Finnie), Hidraot (Raimund Herincx);City of London Sinfonia,Richard Hickox (EMI, recorded live in London in June 1982)
• Video conducted by Ramin, withCaballé/Szirmay/Lindroos/Baquerizo (YouTube, filmed in Madrid on April 16, 1985)
• Armide (Mireille Delunsch), Renaud (Charles Workman), La Haine (Ewa Podleś), Hidraot (Laurent Naouri);Les Musiciens du Louvre,Marc Minkowski (Archiv, recorded live in Paris in November and December 1996)
• Audio conducted byMuti, withAntonacci/Urmana/Cole/Albert (House of Opera, recorded live in Milan on December 7, 1996)

Notes

Sources

• George Lascelles andAntony Peattie, eds.,The New Kobbés Opera Book, G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York, 1997 (ISBN 0091814103)
• Théodore de Lajarte,Bibliothèque Musicale du Théatre de l'Opéra. Catalogue Historique, Chronologique, Anecdotique, Parigi, Librairie des bibliophiles, 1878, Tome I,ad nomen, pp. 290–293(in French) (accessible online atInternet Archive)
• Spire Pitou,The Paris Opéra. An Encyclopedia of Operas, Ballets, Composers, and Performers – Rococo and Romantic, 1715–1815, Greenwood Press, Westport/London, 1985 (ISBN 0-313-24394-8)
• Stanley Sadie (ed.),The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, Grove (Oxford University Press), New York, 1997 (ISBN 978-0-19-522186-2)

Wikimedia Commons has media related toArmide (Gluck).

• Armide: Scores at theInternational Music Score Library Project (French)
• Original libretto at Gallica, Bibliothéque Nationale de France(in French)
• Original printed score at Gallica, Bibliothéque Nationale de France(in French)

• Operas by Christoph Willibald Gluck
• French-language operas
• Operas
• 1777 operas
• Operas based on Jerusalem Delivered
• Opera world premieres at the Paris Opera
• Libretti by Philippe Quinault

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