Le Cadi dupé, a French opera-comique in one act, was composed one year before Gluck's landmark opera Orfeo, which began the development of his international operatic language. With his reformist innovations, Gluck changed the course of contemporary opera completely. In addition to being a composer of serious opera on a grand scale, Gluck was very adept at the comic idiom, producing several such works for the court of Vienna. Le Cadi dupé, or The Duped Judge, was Gluck's first foray into the world of Turkish comedy. Certain types of comic images, derived from ethnic impressions of other cultures or races, were extremely popular in French comic opera. A tradition of Turkish humor was begun during the seventeenth century in the age of Molière when a delegation from Turkey attempted to pay Louis XIV homage. They earned his everlasting ridicule with their antics, and scenes mimicking Turkish behavior began to be an integral part of French comedy and light opera. Molière's La Bourgeouis Gentilhomme contains some of the most immortal of these scenes in the history of the French theater. Included in the score of Gluck's opera are imitations of the sounds of Turkish music. He includes in his orchestration Turkish drums, cymbals and fife, and Turkish themes and motives. The grotesquerie of the Turks is meant to contrast with the lovers and their music and themes. The opera premiered in Vienna at the Burgtheater on December 8, 1761.

© Rita Laurance, All Music Guide