Paride ed Elena

It is the third of Gluck's so-called reform operas for Vienna, following Orfeo ed Euridice and Alceste, and the least often performed of the three.

She calls on him to judge an athletic contest and when asked to sing he does so in praise of her beauty, admitting the purpose of his visit is to win her love.

Eventually, through the intervention of Erasto, who reveals himself as Cupid, she gives way, but Pallas Athene (Athena) warns them of sorrow to come.

In the second act, again in a minor key, Paris fears that he may lose Helen in "Le belle immagini" (The fair semblance) and in the fourth would prefer death to life without Helen, "Di te scordarmi, e vivere" (To forget you and to live).

Arias of Paris have been adapted for tenors, with transposition an octave lower, or appropriated by sopranos and mezzo-sopranos.

The opera was put on in Naples in 1777 but no other productions have been traced until 1901, when it was revived in Prague, and 1905, when it was produced in Hamburg (in German, in a cut version in two acts).