克里斯托夫·维利巴尔德·里特·冯·格鲁克(德语:Christoph Willibald Ritter von Gluck,1714年7月2日-1787年11月5日),德国作曲家。在布拉格学习音乐,后去意大利学习歌剧创作,毕业后去英国旅行。1750年结婚后定居维也纳,四年后任宫廷歌剧院的乐队指挥,并创作了大量的意大利田园剧和法国喜歌剧,1762年,他在《奥菲欧与尤丽狄茜》中尝试改革,创立了一种新的意大利歌剧风格。其一生创作了一百余部歌剧,但当中很多已经遗失。作曲家在巴黎写的最后一部法语歌剧首演失败后回到维也纳,在那里逝世。
格鲁克在融合了抒情悲剧因素的《奥菲欧与优丽狄茜》中对歌剧进行了改革,他针对当时所流行的正歌剧形式中的弊端提出了改革的要求。他主张音乐应该克尽其以表情服务诗歌之职,也就是音乐为戏剧服务,简化音乐及情节,摒弃传统的炫技要求,提倡自然纯朴的表现。他强调歌剧要有深刻的内容,追求戏剧的真实性,并把原由古钢琴伴奏的宣叙调改为用管弦乐伴奏,以此缩短了宣叙调与咏叹调之间的差距。
可是他的这些改革并没有被人们所认可,歌剧上演后,人们较多关注的却是脚本作家Calzabigi,人们拿他和古希腊悲剧家索福克勒斯和英国人莎士比亚比较。但无庸置疑的是,正是格鲁克的改革奠基了现代歌剧的基础。他的这种风格并没有直接被后来的作曲家沿用,但影响了无数人,伯辽兹曾写文章论述他的“改革”歌剧,瓦格纳则上演过他的《伊菲姬尼在奥里德》的修订本。由于不被接受,所以格鲁克创作了三部“改革”歌剧后又回到了传统的老路上。三部中的另外两部是:《阿尔切斯特》(1767年)和《帕里德与艾莱娜》(1770年)。
Christoph Willibald Ritter von Gluck (2 July 1714 – 15 November 1787) was an opera composer of the early classical period . After many years at the Habsburg court at Vienna, Gluck brought about the practical reform of operas dramaturgical practices that many intellectuals had been campaigning for over the years. With a series of radical new works in the 1760s, among them Orfeo ed Euridice and Alceste , he broke the stranglehold that Metastasian opera seria had enjoyed for much of the century.
The strong influence of French opera in these works encouraged Gluck to move to Paris, which he did in November 1773. Fusing the traditions of Italian opera and the French national genre into a new synthesis, Gluck wrote eight operas for the Parisian stages. One of the last of these, Iphigénie en Tauride , was a great success and is generally acknowledged to be his finest work. Though he was extremely popular and widely credited with bringing about a revolution in French opera, Glucks mastery of the Parisian operatic scene was never absolute, and after the poor reception of his Echo et Narcisse he left Paris in disgust and returned to Vienna to live out the remainder of his life.