Christoph Willibald von Gluck

Sammartini, who taught him, became a very close friend. Salieri, a friend from Vienna, went to Paris with him, where they presented a successful opera as a collaboration before coming clean and announcing that the music was all Salieri’s. He so liked an opera of Mozart’s that he invited him to dinner — Mozart’s father had earlier told him to avoid Gluck. He visited Italy with Dittersdorf, and met Handel in London (possibly Garrick too, whose acting style strongly impressed him): he so revered Handel that he kept a portrait of him in his bedroom, though Handel said Gluck knew no more about music than his cook.