CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY IN MUSIC, DANCE, AND FILM 707
most famous—a superspectacle in five acts and sixty-six scenes, including sev-
eral ballets in each act and requiring twenty-four separate stage sets. And thus
opera developed in Italy. The list of composers is long and the bibliography of
their many works inspired by classical antiquity impressive; particularly star-
tling is the number of repetitions of favorite subjects.
Many of the operatic composers of the early period wrote cantatas as well.
As examples of this musical form, we shall mention three works by Johann Se-
bastian Bach (1685-1750) in the catalogue of his secular cantatas. Some of these
he himself entitled dramma per musica, and modern critics have gone so far as to
label them "operettas." In Cantata 201 (Der Streit zzvischen Phoebus una Pan), Bach
presents the contest between Phoebus and Pan as a musical satire aimed at a
hostile critic of his works, Johann Adolph Scheibe. The text is derived from
Ovid's version. Mt. Tmolus and Momus, god of mirth, award the victory to Pan,
while Midas is punished with a pair of ass' ears. The "Hunting Cantata" 208 has
the myth of Diana and Endymion as its theme. Finally, Cantata 213 (Hercules auf
dem Scheidewege) depicts Hercules at the crossroads; he rejects the blandishments
of Pleasure in favor of the hardship, virtue, and renown promised to him by
Virtue (see p. 540). The more familiar Christmas Oratorio uses the musical themes
of this cantata.
Blow, Purcell, Lully, and Handel. In England during the Baroque period, plays
with incidental music and ballet became very much the fashion; these led even-
tually to the evolution of opera in a more traditional sense. John Blow (1649-1708)
wrote a musical-dramatic composition, Venus and Adonis. Although the work
bears the subtitle "A masque for the entertainment of the king," it is in reality
a pastoral opera constructed along the most simple lines.
It was Blow's pupil, Henry Purcell (1659-1695), who created a masterpiece
that has become one of the landmarks in the history of opera, Dido and Aeneas.
The work was composed for Josias Priest's Boarding School for Girls, in Chelsea;
the libretto by Nahum Tate comes from Book 4 of Vergil's Aeneid.^2 The artful
economy and tasteful blending of the various elements in Purcell's score have
often been admired. Dido's lament ("When I am laid in Earth") as she breathes
her last is a noble and touching aria.
In France, Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632-1687), a giant in the development of
opera, produced Cadmus et Hermione in collaboration with the poet Philippe
Quinault; this was the first of a series of fifteen such tragic operas (twelve
of them to texts by Quinault). Some of the other titles confirm the extent of the
debt to Greece and Rome: Alceste, Thésée, Atys, Proserpine, Persée, Phaéton, Acis
et Galatée.
Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683-1764) was the most significant heir to the
mantle of Lully. He too created many operas and opera-ballets on Greek and
Roman themes, for example, Hippolyte et Aricie, Castor et Pollux, Dardanus, and
Les Fêtes d'Hébé.