In " Eurydice " was contained the great principle of the modern opera, that the music should be subservient to the emotional meaning of the text ; the recitative was discovered, a medium between speech and melody which is the basis of the lyric drama, with all its forms, indeed, foreshadowed. It was the reversal of the usual order of things; the would be imitators were inventors.
Between the age of Pericles and that of the Renaissance, music and the drama occasionally had been associated, crudely, it is true. We have record of a certain " Robin and Marion," which was given at the court of Charles d'Artois in Naples in 1285, which seems to have been remarkably similar to the ballad opera that has preserved its popularity after a long career. For this the composer, Adam de la Halle, took a number of the songs of the day, arranged them to form a story and connected them by a dialogue of his own invention. Quite similar are the madrigal plays of a slightly later period.
In 1581, " Circe," a ballet opera, was performed at the Louvre to celebrate a royal wedding. The masques, which were dramatic entertainments based upon mythological or allegorical subjects, combined with their poetry and dancing occasional vocal or instrumental music, one written and arranged by Ben Johnson being quite operatic in conception. The fact remains, however, that since the opera was not an evolution, these instances are of little significance in its history.
Seven years later, at Mantua, the marriage of Marghe rita, Infanta of Savoy, to Francesco Gonzaga, was celebrated by the production of other operas, one of these "Arianna," the libretto again by Rinuccini, and the music by Claudio Monteverde, chapel master of the bridegroom's father, the Duke of Mantua. It was written in the new " expressivo style " (recitative), which had been found to invest the words with a dramatic power which can be obtained in no other way. The following year, Monteverde produced his " Orfeo," which was a remarkable advance over Peri's treat ment. The composer was a man of initiative who never had been convinced that nothing was good unless it had first been thought of by the Greeks. He had a number of ideas of his own concerning the orchestra, and in " Orfeo " over thirty instruments accompanied the lamentations of his hero, or voiced the shrieks of the demons as he drew " his half regain'd Eurydice " along the flaming passages of the nether world. These, to particularize, were two harpsichords, two bass viols, several viols "da brazzio," a double harp, two small French violins, two chitarroni, two organi di legno (sets of wooden pipes), three viols da gamba, four trom bones, one regale (folding organ), two cornetti (wooden horns), one flute, one trumpet, and three sordeni (muted trumpets). A conception so vast naturally crowned Monte
verde with glory and dowered him with numerous pupils and imitators. The expense of such productions being great, they were designed only for the edification of princes, and as yet the people had no taste of opera.
Lusty growth became discernible in the infant form. For instance, two new orchestral effects had been introduced by Monteverde, the pizzicato of plucked strings, and the violin tremolo. Alessandro Scarlatti, founder of the great Neapolitan school, and the most learned musician of the day, divided dramatic expression into three forms — recitative secco, or unaccompanied, for the ordinary business of the stage; recitative stromento, or accompanied, for the expres sion of deep emotion; and the aria, for impassioned soliloquy. In 1647, the opera reached Paris, which was destined to be the scene of many of its later triumphs and reforms. The first opera to be performed there was Peri's " Eurydice," which remained in favor despite newer developments. The performance was under the patronage of Cardinal Mazarin, who was thanked very poorly one hundred and fifty years later by being made the villain in one of Cherubini's compositions.
Robert Cambert, against whom the intriguing Jean Baptiste Lully contrived so effectually, tried his hand at the new music, his " Pomone " and " The Pains and Pleasures of Love " being still extant. Lully, taking his predecessor's operatic form as he found it, wrote twenty operas in less than that number of years, reflecting the manners and tone of the French court. In the history of the opera, this shrewd gentleman is important for having put the French school on a firm basis, and for the invention of the overture, then consisting of a prelude, a fugue, and a dance movement. Why foolishly insist upon the absence of wise deeds in the career of Charles IL, when it was he who sent Pelham Humphries over to Paris to study the opera from Lully? Inspired by his recitals, Henry Purcell, England's greatest musical genius, in 1680 wrote the first English opera, " Dido and iEneas," its libretto being from the pen of Nahum Tate, the poet laureate of the time. Its merits were first submitted to a young ladies' boarding school kept by Jonas Priest in Leicester Fields. Evidently the verdict of the youthful femi nine mind was held in high esteem in those days. The verdict must have been satisfactory, at any rate, for, as Dryden assures us, So ceased the rival crew when Purcell came; They sung no more, or only sung his name.