However, Calzabigi was also impressed by French tragédie en musique, and eager to reform Italian opera by making it simpler and more dramatically effective.
In 1761 he settled in Vienna, where he met likeminded reformers: Gluck; Count Giacomo Durazzo, the theatre director; Gasparo Angiolini, the choreographer; Giovanni Maria Quaglio, the set designer; and the castrato Gaetano Guadagni.
Calzabigi then wrote the libretto for Alceste, which further abandoned the practices of opera seria in favour of "noble simplicity".
La finta giardiniera, set by Pasquale Anfossi in 1774 and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in 1775, has been ascribed to Calzabigi, but this is now regarded as doubtful.
[1] In 1774 Calzabigi was banished from the Viennese court as the result of a scandal and took up residence in Pisa and in 1780 in Naples, where he wrote his last two librettos, Elfrida (1792) and Elvira (1794), both set to music by Giovanni Paisiello, and continued his literary activities until his death.