Christoph Willibald Gluck

Young Gluck was a singer in a church choir and thus decided to study music in Prague although his parents wanted him to work in the forest. Having to earn his own money he worked as a part-time musician and finished his studies in Milan where he wrote his first Italian style opera. Impressing the audience he was invited to London where he had first contact with the music of George Frideric Handel. In 1752, he finally accepted a job at a theatre in Vienna, but continued composing operas and ballets for clients in Paris.