As Wagner's controversial music-aesthetic theories began to appear in print in France, French critics quickly seized upon Gluck as an analogue. Comparisons between the two composers began to crop up as early as the 1850s, as many anti-Wagnerians sought evidence that the newer composer's supposedly groundbreaking theories were fundamentally derivative. Gluck, like Wagner, was an operatic reformer (but a successful one, in the eyes of many French critics) with a “système” of musical composition, and the eighteenth-century operatic reforms Gluck had proposed in his well-known preface to Alceste clearly demonstrated French superiority. On the other side of the fence, Wagner obviously viewed Gluck as a pivotal composer in opera history; in 1847 he had adapted Iphigénie en Aulide for a performance in Dresden, and he held the overture, in particular, in high esteem. As early as 1841, Wagner showered the work with praise in the French press in an article titled “De L'Ouverture” in La Revue et Gazette musicale de Paris (January 10, 14, and 17, 1841), where it served as his primary example for the dramatic capabilities of the opera overture.