Le diable à quatre is an opéra comique

Opéra comique

Opéra comique is a genre of French opera that contains spoken dialogue and arias. It emerged out of the popular opéra comiques en vaudevilles of the Fair Theatres of St Germain and St Laurent , which combined existing popular tunes with spoken sections...

 in three acts by Christoph Willibald Gluck

Christoph Willibald Gluck

Christoph Willibald Ritter von Gluck was an opera composer of the early classical period. After many years at the Habsburg court at Vienna, Gluck brought about the practical reform of opera's dramaturgical practices that many intellectuals had been campaigning for over the years...

. The French-language

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 libretto is by Michel-Jean Sedaine

Michel-Jean Sedaine

Michel-Jean Sedaine was a French dramatist, was born in Paris.- Biography :His father, who was an architect, died when Sedaine was quite young, leaving no fortune, and the boy began life as a mason's labourer...

 and Pierre Baurans, after a translation by Claude-Pierre Patu of the 1731 ballad opera

Ballad opera

The term ballad opera is used to refer to a genre of English stage entertainment originating in the 18th century and continuing to develop in the following century and later. There are many types of ballad opera...

 by Charles Coffey

Charles Coffey

Charles Coffey was an Irish playwright and composer.His best known opera is probably The Beggar’s Wedding , which capitalizes on the success of John Gay's The Beggar's Opera...

 entitled The Devil to Pay, or The Wives Metamorphos’d . It was first performed at Laxenburg

Laxenburg

Laxenburg is a town in the district of Mödling in the Austrian state of Lower Austria, near Vienna.- History :The place is well-known for its castle, Schloss Laxenburg, which, beside Schönbrunn, was the most important summer seat of the Habsburg dynasty....

 on May 28, 1759. The work was a popular success. Joseph Haydn

Joseph Haydn

Franz Joseph Haydn , known as Joseph Haydn , was an Austrian composer, one of the most prolific and prominent composers of the Classical period. He is often called the "Father of the Symphony" and "Father of the String Quartet" because of his important contributions to these forms...

 used a melody from it, "Je n’aimais pas le tabac beaucoup (I didn’t like tobacco much)” in the first movement of his symphony Le soir

Symphony No. 8 (Haydn)

Joseph Haydn wrote his Symphony No. 8 in G major under the employ of Prince Esterházy in 1761, in the transition between the Baroque and Classical periods. It is the third part of a set of three symphonies - Le matin , Le midi and Le soir .-Orchestration:The orchestration used in Symphony No...

.

Klaus Hortschansky has noted that Le diable à quatre is one of Gluck's few stageworks where the composer did not use musical material from prior works, or recycled material from it into future works. Bruce Brown has discussed Gluck's authorship of the music in detail, and has also edited the work for the Gluck Sämtliche Werke.

(The same libretto was set to music arranged by Andre Danican Philidor and Jean-Louis Laruette and first staged with the above title on 19 August 1756 in Paris.)

Roles

Role	Voice type	Premiere Cast, (Conductor:)
The Marquise	soprano
The Marquis	tenor
Margot	soprano
Jacques, a cobbler, Margot's husband	baritone
An astrologer	tenor

Synopsis

The story concerns an ill-natured Marquise. An astrologer, to whom she had refused shelter at her chateau, transforms her into the wife of a surly cobbler named Jacques and transforms the cobbler’s sweet-natured wife into the Marquise. After the Marquise learns her lesson, the astrologer reverses the spell.