ALCESTE. Tragedie: Opera en Trois Actes...Representée… par l’Academie N. de Musique le 30 Avril 1776.

Paris: Chez Des Lauriers. [1790]. Full score, upright folio. Engraved title, [blank verso], [“Catalogue…”], [blank verso], I-293 pp, complete. Front cover with manuscript title plate. Hand-painted wrappers over spine with 4 raised bands. Pp. 11-12: Tear within engraved area resulting in marginal chip, lower corner of last 2 leaves lacking (not affecting within the plate). A generally clean and crisp copy, including the Des Lauriers catalogue of publications on the second leaf, the latest work listed being 'Echo et Narcisse' (1779). Hirsh, II, 264; Hopkinson 44A (h).


The second of Gluck's so-called "reform operas" (after Orfeo ed Euridice), Alceste was originally produced in Vienna at the Burgeheater in 1767, where the full score was first published in 1769. A heavily revised version with a French libretto by Leblanc du Roullet premiered in Paris on 23 April 1776 in the second Salle du Palais-Royal. The opera is usually given in the revised version, although this is sometimes translated into Italian. Both versions are in three acts. (11138)

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