Working closely with librettist Calzabigi and choreographer Angiolini, Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714-1787) composed Orfeo ed Euridice in Vienna in 1762. A retelling of the Orpheus myth that repudiated the stiff formality of Baroque opera seria for a simplified and more dramatic structure, Gluck's Viennese Orfeo ed Euridice was the first of his "reform" operas and marks what many historians call the first modern opera. Twelve years later, while Gluck was visiting Paris, he undertook to revise Orfeo, bringing it in line with French tastes. First, of course, he changed the language from Calzabigi's Italian to a French translation and adaptation by Moline, thereby changing the name of the work to Orfee et Eurydice. Second, he changed the title character from a castrato soprano to a fully male tenor, thereby changing the keys as well personality of Orpheus. Third, he changed much of the music, thereby adding some darkly colored beautiful music, altering—and some would say damaging—the dramatic structure of the work. While the revised score was a success in the French capital—Marie Antoinette, the work's dedicatee, awarded him an annual pension for his efforts—the final result was ultimately deemed inferior to the original by most historians.

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