"C'est toujours une entreprise fort incertaine"

Gluck, Christoph Willibald, German composer (1714-1787). Letter signed ("Votre trés humble et tres obeisant serviteur, Chevalier Gluck", with autograph date).

Inquire

To the librettist Valadier, declining to set his opera "Cora" to music. Gluck expresses his mortification at being unable to comply ("I am absolutely incapable of undertaking any work at all which requires application") and is unwilling to oversee any other composer in the work because of the difficulties of such an enterprise, and because the person he might have turned to is already overburdened: "Tres flatté de vôtre obligeante lettre, monsieur, je suis egalement mortifie, que mon etat, et ma situation ne me permettent pas de repondre à vôtre empressement, et de me prêter a vos desirs. Je suis absolument incapable d'entreprende tel ouvrage que ce soit, qui exige de l'aplication; et pour ce qui est d'en charger quelqu' autre sous ma direction, c'est toujours une entreprise fort incertaine, epineuse, et sujette à mille inconveniens; D'autant plus que celuy, que je pourrois avoir en vue est fort chargé d'autres - ouvrages, et ne pourroit pas meme - acepter cette commission [...]".

Nevertheless, Gluck praises Valadier's libretto: "Your work is rich in tableaux and in theatrical effects, and as regards a few small alterations which might be suitable, we would need to be near one another in order to discuss them ... Given that Cora is your first dramatic work I assure you that you have made a most happy beginning; and by continuing to exercise your talents in this career, as I advise you to do, you may hope for the most decided success". Gluck concludes with thanks to Valadier for thinking of him, and good wishes in finding "some composer who may second by his good music the beauty of your opera" (transl.).

Gluck had virtually retired from composition after his return to Vienna in 1779, and systematically refused all libretti that were offered to him. Valadier's libretto for "Cora", based on Marmontel's novel" Les Incas", had won a prize at the Académie royale in 1783: it was eventually set to music by Méhul, and premiered on 15 February 1791, though without success.