Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714–1787) is one of the geniuses who determined the development of musical art in the second half of the 18th century. Contemporaries believed that he had revolutionized music. Gluck's reform of the opera genre began with a touching love story - "Orpheus and Eurydice" (1762) and ended with the formidable and passionate tragedy "Iphigenia in Tauris" (1779). But the path to reform was long and thorny: in his youth, Gluck served in princely chapels, worked in nomadic enterprises, and wrote music for the festivities of the Viennese court. His work was admired by emperors and princes, philosophers and poets, society ladies and encyclopedists. The book by Larisa Kirillina, a professor at the Moscow Conservatory, tells how the son of a forester from a remote Bavarian village, steadily following his calling, conquered Italy, Austria and France, and at the end of his life became the idol of all enlightened Europe.[Adapted for AlReader]