But it is best to regard these privately performed works merely as experiments, and to date the actual foundation of opera from the year 1600, when a public performance of Peri’s ‘Euridice’ was given at Florence in honour of the marriage of Maria de’ Medici and Henry IV. of France.  A few years later a printed edition of this work was published at Venice, a copy of which is now in the library of the British Museum, and in recent times it has been reprinted, so that those who are curious in these matters can study this protoplasmic opera at their leisure.  Expect for a few bars of insignificant chorus, the whole work consists of the accompanied recitative, which was the invention of these Florentine reformers.  The voices are accompanied by a violin, chitarone (a large guitar), lira grande, liuto grosso, and gravicembalo or harpsichord, which filled in the harmonies indicated by the figured bass.  The instrumental portions of the work are poor and thin, and the chief beauty lies in the vocal part, which is often really pathetic and expressive.  Peri evidently tried to give musical form to the ordinary inflections of the human voice, how successfully may be seen in the Lament of Orpheus which Mr. Morton Latham has reprinted in his ‘Renaissance of Music,’ The original edition of ‘Euridice’ contains an interesting preface, in which the composer sets forth the theory upon which he worked, and the aims which he had in view.  It is too long to be reprinted here, but should be read by all interested in the early history of opera.

With the production of ‘Euridice’ the history of opera may be said to begin; but if the new art-form had depended only upon the efforts of Peri and his friends, it must soon have languished and died.  With all their enthusiasm, the little band of Florentines had too slight an acquaintance with the science of music to give proper effect to the ideas which they originated.  Peri built the ship, but it was reserved for the genius of Claudio Monteverde to launch it upon a wider ocean than his predecessor could have dreamed of.  Monteverde had been trained in the polyphonic school of Palestrina, but his genius had never acquiesced in the rules and restrictions in which the older masters delighted.  He was a poor contrapuntist, and his madrigals are chiefly interesting as a proof of how ill the novel harmonies of which he was the discoverer accorded with the severe purity of the older school But in the new art he found the field his genius required.  What had been weakness and license in the madrigal became strength and beauty in the opera.  The new wine was put into new bottles, and both were preserved.  Monteverde produced his ‘Arianna’ in 1607, and his ‘Orfeo’ in 1608, and with these two works started opera upon the path of development which was to culminate in the works of Wagner.  ‘Arianna,’ which, according to Marco da Gagliano, himself a rival composer of high ability, ’visibly moved all the theatre to tears,’