John Smyth wrote:

>I'm just asking if the Gluck is melodious.  I know it contains the famous
>"Dance of the Blessed Spirits." (As a reference, I found the last 20
>minutes of Monteverdi's "Poppea" absolutely heavenly, but the first two
>hours rather boring.).

Gluck's French Orphee et Eurydice represents his rewritten Italian
Orfeo ed Euridice.  The Italian Orfeo ed Euridice he wrote for a male
castrato and it is mostly sung these days either by a female mezzo or
contralto or by a counter-tenor.  The French was written for a high
tenor.  Both operas are absolutely beautiful and heart-breaking and do
not contain secco recitativos (which you had referred to) or dialogue.
The music is all melodious in the extreme.  It is an opera I listen to
often in the Italian with either contraltos such as Kathleen Ferrier or
counter-tenors such as Jochen Kowalski and many others of each voice
category and the French tenor version.  There are also recordings of the
Berlioz version for mezzo in French and cut in various ways.  I would
avoid any of these Berlioz versions (most of the French female recordings
create their own "Berlioz" version of Gluck).  I think that the Minkowski
is probably very worthwhile and I will soon make it my 10th recording
of this work that I never tire of.  Unfortunately, after Iphigenie en
Tauride and Armide and now Orphee, the Minkowski Gluck project ceased
(the plug was pulled by the record company).  That is a shame as there
are still three operas to go and Iphi en Tauride is the one we needed
the least and probably ditto about Orphee (I qualify this inasmuch as
there was only one single French tenor recording of this opera previously
and that deleted a major aria).  These days I mostly enjoy the two DVDs
I have, the Italian with Kowalski and French with Hobson.  In the end
only your own ears can tell you and nobody else's ears.

Cheers, Yoel
Der Bach singt voller Wohllaut durch das Dunkel.