OPERA (lt., composition, from Lat. opera, work; connected with opus. Skt. opus, work ) . A I form of stage-play. The Athenian drama was grand-parent to the opera. When that ar tistic reform. the Renaissance, swept Italy it stamped its influence on each one of the fine arts; it was a universal harking back to the period of the classics. The arts that had idled along through the Middle Ages were reanimated with the breath of classicism; but music alone was an exception to the rest. It was the youngest of the arts and differed by nature from the others in that it was not imitative. While its develop ment was steady from about the tenth century on, this progress was almost entirely free from the influences of ancient models, and on lines dic tated by evolution itself. One of the prevailing symptoms of the Italian Renaissance was com plete dissatisfaction with art as it stood. It was easy enough to reconstruct the ideals of the other arts: there were tangible models to imi tate; but mimic of these served the cause of music. Out of the hazy past came confusing echoe§ of the Greek drama, a combination of poetry, music, and the dance, and this was adopted as the ideal plan upon which to recon struct music. Their choice seemed logical enough to the crew of reformers who went to Greece for most of its formulae; but when it is eonsidered that they knew little of the actual use to which music was put during those days of Athenian art, it must appear as a step in the dark. Remarkably enough, it was a step in the right direction; a step which, modernized and made practicable, afterwards led opera out of a discouraging tangle of half-hearted theories and ill-assorted experiments to a point of artistic culmination.
Previous to the real beginnings of opera there were plays to which in one manner and another music was linked. There were costumes, scenery, and action—all these displayed on a stage; and the trend was sometimes dramat ically or sentimentally pastoral, frequently comic. Adam do la Halle (c-.1235-c.1287) composed a dra matic pastoral called Le feu de Robin rt de Marion for the French Court at Naples, produced there about 1285, which has been mistaken for the actual starting point of opera. in reality it was nothing Inure than a string of ballads, popular in that day, joined by a dialogue; and as Halle wrote only the latter, his fame as a composer is almost erased. There were unary other efforts of this kind, none of which had a direct influence on the opera of the future. The plight of the serious composer striving then for a vehicle of dramatic utterance was pitiable. The folk-song or ballad could not be taken seri ously by him as it stood: all his training had taught lihn to honor only the complex art of polyphonic writing, which is melody multiplied, in which the different voices interwove and crossea each other. He might—and did—take
folk-song as material about which to weave his counterpoint. This bred new troubles, since such a procedure could not endure the test of dramatic action: several voices singing in counterpoint scarcely could be made to stand for the dra matic utterance of a single person. So he dared such experiments only in the unexacting domain of the concert room. Another claim for attention comes from the ballet of that period, especially in France. Besides the grandeur of the scale on which these entertainments were carried out, the plots were sufficiently important dramatically to cause sonic historians to believe this the begin ning of opera. We, from our point of vantage, can see now the theoretical errors of all these attempts; but they were seen long ago by a band of enthusiasts.
Toward the end of the sixteenth century there assembled a number of Florentine noblemen de termined to free dramatic music from its tram mels. They have gone down in history as La Corneroto, and the circle was composed of Bardi, Strozzi, Galllei—father of the famous astronomer —and Corsi. With these amateurs there con sorted Ottavio Rinuccini, a poet, and the two musicians Jacopo Peri (c.I560-1630) and Giulio Caccini (c.1558-1618). In pursuing their Hel lenic ideal of reconstructing music upon the principles of the Greek drama they ignored all the contrapuntal advance music had made dur ing four centuries. The only task they set be fore themselves was to express in sounds the sen timents of the poet; and music as an independ ent art was discovered. What latitude this gave composers is easy to imagine; it also freed the voice so that it could work singly with an or chestral accompaniment. In a word, it was the first known attempt of merging the word and the sound into an individual whole. Theories grew into actuality when a performance of Dofne was celebrated at the Palace of Corsi in 1595. The libretto of this, the first opera, was by Rinuecini and the music by Peri; and it was written according to the formula' of the Con2e rota in the stile roppresentatiro—the 'expressive style.' Do foe was successfully performed several times, hut always in private, and now the score is not discoverable. The public was initiated five years later when two settings of Rinuccini's Eurydiee were made—one by Peri and the other by Caccini. Both operas were produced in part during the marriage celebrations of Henry IV. and Maria de' Medici at the Pitti Palace. October 6, 1600. These two operas embody the tentative strivings of the Florentine romeroto in their efforts to revive the drama of the Greeks. Meas uring the accomplished thing by the ideal model the former must appear ridiculous and very wide of the mark. But here at least was a step in an untrodden path: Opera was now on a basis which admitted of development. Its career had begun.