The author finds much to praise in every school; he is neither impatient of old opera nor intolerant of new developments which have yet to prove their value; and he makes us feel that he is not only an enthusiastic lover of opera as a whole, but a cultivated musician.  The historical plan adopted, in contradistinction to the arrangement by which the operas are grouped under their titles in alphabetical order, involves perhaps a little extra trouble to the casual reader; but by the aid of the index, any opera concerning which the casual reader desires to be informed can be found in its proper place, and the chief facts regarding its origin and production are given there as well as the story of its action.

J.A.  FULLER-MAITLAND

June 1907

THE OPERA

CHAPTER I

THE BEGINNINGS OF OPERA

PERI—&sh
y;MONTEVERDE—­CAVALLI—­CESTI—­CAMBERT—­LULLI—­PURCELL—­ KEISER—­SCARLATTI—­HANDEL

The early history of many forms of art is wrapped in obscurity.  Even in music, the youngest of the arts, the precise origin of many modern developments is largely a matter of conjecture.  The history of opera, fortunately for the historian, is an exception to the rule.  All the circumstances which combine to produce the idea of opera are known to us, and every detail of its genesis is established beyond the possibility of doubt.

The invention of opera partook largely of the nature of an accident.  Late in the sixteenth century a few Florentine amateurs, fired with the enthusiasm for Greek art which was at that time the ruling passion of every cultivated spirit in Italy, set themselves the task of reconstructing the conditions of the Athenian drama.  The result of their labours, regarded as an attempted revival of the lost glories of Greek tragedy, was a complete failure; but, unknown to themselves, they produced the germ of that art-form which, as years passed on, was destined, in their own country at least, to reign alone in the affections of the people, and to take the place, so far as the altered conditions permitted, of the national drama which they had fondly hoped to recreate.

The foundations of the new art-form rested upon the theory that the drama of the Greeks was throughout declaimed to a musical accompaniment.  The reformers, therefore, dismissed spoken dialogue from their drama, and employed in its place a species of free declamation or recitative, which they called musica parlante.  The first work in which the new style of composition was used was the ‘Dafne’ of Jacopo Peri, which was privately performed in 1597.  No trace of this work survives, nor of the musical dramas by Emilio del Cavaliere and Vincenzo Galilei to which the closing years of the sixteenth century gave birth.