The Classical Music Book

62

ONE OF THE MOST

MAGNIFICENT AND

EXPENSEFULL

DIVERSIONS

EURIDICE (1600), JACOPO PERI

T

he conditions for the

birth of opera were

right in Florence in

the 1590s. Large-scale theatrical

entertainments utilizing music,

known as intermedi, often

performed as interludes during

spoken plays, were commissioned

for dynastic celebrations, such

as weddings and baptisms. Their

musical sections—songs (or “arias”),

dances, and choruses—were

themselves interspersed with

spoken dialogue. It was the

introduction of recitative (recitar

cantando), the art of speaking in

song, that defined opera.

Florentine intellectual societies,

most notably the Camerata de’

Bardi, which met at the house of

patron, playwright, and composer

Giovanni de’ Bardi, had included in

Orpheus and Eurydice climb out

of the Underworld in Edward Poynter’s

painting of 1862. The Greek myth was

a particularly apt subject for opera

because Orpheus was a musician.

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

Early opera

BEFORE

c.700 bce Ancient Greek

drama incorporates music.

Greek myth identifies Orpheus

as the “father of songs.”

1598 Peri collaborates with

Jacopo Corsi on La Dafne,

the first opera, to a libretto by

Ottavio Rinuccini, staged at

the Palazzo Corsini, Florence.

AFTER

1607 Monteverdi’s first opera,

L’ O r f e o, is staged in Mantua.

1637 The first public opera

house—the Teatro San

Cassiano in Venice—opens

with Francesco Manelli’s

L’Andromeda (now lost).

1640 Monteverdi composes

Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria, his

first opera written for a public

theater in Venice.

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