Christoph Willibald Gluck walked into the most extravagant art form in Europe and told it to shut up. Eighteenth-century opera had become a showcase for singer vanity — arias existed to display vocal gymnastics, and drama was an afterthought. Gluck stripped away the ornamentation, subordinated music to story, and created operas that actually made audiences feel something.

This episode traces Gluck from his Bavarian origins through the courts of Vienna and Paris, his reform operas, and the artistic revolution that paved the way for Mozart, Wagner, and everything that followed.

• His opera Orfeo ed Euridice launched the reform movement that transformed opera from vocal spectacle to dramatic art
• He insisted that music serve the drama rather than showcase the singers, a radical break with convention
• His rivalry with Nicola Piccinni in Paris divided the city into warring factions of opera lovers
• Mozart, Berlioz, and Wagner all acknowledged his reforms as foundational to their own work