According to a well-established narrative, opera was
created by a group of Florentine, the Camerata de' Bardi. The nobleman
Giovanni de' Bardi and Vincenzo Galilei (the father of Galileo), deeply
dissatisfied with what they saw as the deplorable state of contemporary
music, looked back to ancient times, when music, rather than an exhibition
of virtuosity, was used to accompany and emphasize poetry. Pietro de'
Bardi, Giovanni's son, relates in brief the origins of opera and places
great emphasis upon the activities lead by the Camerata:
Vedeva questo grande ingegno [Vincenzo Galilei] che uno dei
principali scopi di quella accademia era, col ritrovare l'antica musica,
quanto però fosse possibile in materia così oscura, di migliorare quella
moderna, e levarla in qualche parte del misero stato, nel quale l'avevano
messa principalmente i Goti, dopo la perdita di essa, e delle altre
scienze più nobili. Perciò fu egli il primo a far sentire il canto in
In this letter, 'stile rappresentativo' is defined as a
musical setting for solo voice with instrumental accompaniment, in which
great care is taken in preserving the understanding of the poetic text,
the aesthetic aim being to move the affections of the soul:
Costui [Jacopo Peri] a
competenza di Giulio [Caccini] scoperse l'impresa dello stile
rappresentativo, e sfuggendo una certa rozzezza e troppa antichità, che si
sentiva nelle musiche del Galileo [Vincenzo Galilei], addolcì insieme con
Giulio questo stile, e lo resero atto a muovere raramente gli affetti,
come in progresso di tempo venne fatto all'uno e all'altro.
This narrative seems to persuade that Florence, the
heart of Renaissance culture and home to linguistic purity in the Italian
language, was also the cradle of opera, one of the most successful musical
genres of all times. Furthermore, it also leads to believe that the
influence of philosophical and literary speculation in its development was
somewhat greater than that of music itself. Opera was to be the genre
where poetry dominated and where music, essential though subservient,
played the role of amplifying both the sound and emotions of the lyric
word. Pietro della Valle, a composer active in the first half of the
seventeenth century, indicates that the new operatic genre, itself heavily
indebted to the 'stile rappresentativo', was created by composers under a
poetic and generally cultural direction:
Le prime composizioni
buone che si siano sentite in questa forma, sono state la Dafne, l'Arianna, l'Euridice e le altre cose di
Firenze e di Mantova. I primi che in Italia abbiano lodevolmente seguitato
questa strada [...] sono stati il Principe di Venosa [Carlo Gesualdo], che
diede forse luce a tutti gli altri nel cantare affettuoso; Claudio
Monteverde e Jacopo Peri nelle opere sopranominate; ma però indirizzati
dal Rinuccini, autore di poesie, dal Bardi, intendentissimo delle
antichità musicali, dal Corsi, peritissimo nella pratica e gran mecenate e
benefattore de' professori di essa.
And Giulio Caccini, composer and singer at the Medici
court and a member of the Camerata, clarifies this point in his preface to
Euridice, clearly connecting
the creation of opera and the cultural debates lead by Giovanni de'
In essa ella [Giovanni
de' Bardi, to whom Caccini dedicates the print of Euridice] riconoscerà quello stile
usato da me altre volte, molti anni or sono. [...] E questa è quella
maniera altresì, la quale negli anni che fioriva la camerata sua in
Firenze, discorrendo ella, diceva, insieme con molti altri nobili
virtuosi, essere stata usata dagli antichi Greci nel rappresentare le loro
tragedie e altre favole, adoperando il canto [...] non avendo [io] mai
nelle mie musiche usato altr'arte che l'imitazione de' sentimenti delle
Historical facts attest that Florence was
indeed the place where the first operas were performed and that the first
author of operatic libretti was Ottavio Rinuccini, a poet employed at the
Medici court. Is this sufficient, however, to conclude that opera is the
typical product of Florentine culture? And although the first operas were
characterized by a non-virtuosic score which permitted a ready
understanding of the literary text, is this sufficient to conclude that in
opera the libretto comes first and that poetry has a leading role over
music? These issues will be the central focus of the following discussion.
Ottavio Rinuccini's theatrical career will indicate whether early
seventeenth-century Florence had such a taste for opera, and a brief
examination of case studies in libretti will attest whether opera as a
genre, rather than single examples, did indeed give precedence to poetry
Ottavio Rinuccini must have started his career as an employee at the Medici court at an early age. He was only seventeen when, in 1579, he was commissioned to write the text
for a mascherata to be represented during the festivities celebrating the wedding between Francesco I Medici and his mistress Bianca Cappello. By this time, the young poet was already a member of the Camerata de' Bardi.
The Camerata had started to meet around 1576. Its
leaders Giovanni de' Bardi and Vincenzo Galilei referred to the Florentine
philologist Girolamo Mei for accurate information on ancient culture and
the correct interpretation of treatises. Mei referred to Aristotle and
Plato for his musical thought, and through this light identified the main
problem of contemporary vocal music to be the total absence of aesthetic
power over the audience, a power central to the Aristotelian concept of catharsis which had been
achieved in Greek tragedy by using music as a way of empowering the
expression of the affetti contained in the text. Thus according to Bardi, Galilei and Mei, music should have a subservient role towards poetry. But in contemporary times they had witnessed a reversal of roles in which the poetic text had become increasingly a mere excuse for musical virtuosity:
[...] par loro [to
contemporary composers] d'esser tanto più scaltri, quanto più fanno le
parti muovere: cosa per mio avviso tratta dagli strumenti di corde, nelle
quali non essendo voce, conviene che 'l sonatore [...] muova le parti, e
vada facendo fughe, e contrappunti doppi, o altre invenzioni per non recar
tedio agli ascoltanti suoi; e questa per mio avviso è quella specie di
musica, che è tanto biasimata dai Filosofi, e in particolare da Aristotele
Between the mid-1570s and the early 1580s, the Camerata
de' Bardi was not the only meeting-ground for discussions on arts, but the
publication of a theoretical output clearly appealing to the authority of
the ancients and attacking modern music places the Camerata at the
forefront of our investigation. Galilei and Bardi, however, were not particularly interested in music for
the stage, nor in creating a new genre which would see an action entirely
sung: their aim was simply to reform vocal music.
Music obviously had a place in contemporary stage
productions. Ancient Greek tragedy was still a model of practice when
staging contemporary tragedies and pastorals, with their choruses and
specific portions of the text accompanied by music. Other theatrical
genres away from the Aristotelian codes and mainly conceived for court
festivals, such as balli, intermedi and mascherate, allocated music a
larger role. But though conceived for the stage, these were not
characterized as much by an entirely sung dramatic action as by the
display of stage machinery, lavish costumes and the virtuosity of the
performers. And it is in one of these non-dramatic contexts that Rinuccini
made his first contribution to the Medici stage.
His contribution to the 1579 festivities was Maschere d'Amazzoni. Rinuccini's text favours long declamations by one character, often in ottava rima, over the participation of more characters: narration takes over any possibility of dialogue, thus reducing even further the dramatic potential of an
essentially non-dramatic genre. Entertainment and literary affectation
seem to go hand in hand in the mascherata, as suggested by the
title of this mascherata, Rinaldo e il Tasso, which was
performed in 1586 for the wedding of Cesare d'Este and Virginia
Questi ch'incontro a' Cavalieri del Sole
così cortese a' preghi miei s'accinse,
e co 'l
sembiante e con le voci sole,
senza oprar ferro, spaventogli e
richiamato da me, dimostrar vuole
quanto folle desìo vi mosse
a venir qui con sì superbi vanti,
o schiera iniqua di
The poetic style and the images, though suggesting a
possible setting and choreography, do not appear to be substantially
different from those found in the epic genre.
During the 1580s and 1590s, Rinuccini was a constant presence in theatrical
performances at court, but the closest he got to transferring an action onto the stage was in
1589, with the famous cycle of the intermedi which formed part of the
festivities for the wedding of Ferdinando I Medici and Christine of
Lorraine. These intermedi staged various aspects of the power of music: from conceptual and philosophical notions such as the harmony of the spheres, to mythological exemplars such as Apollo's victory over Python and Arione's rescue by the dolphins. The third intermedio, with Apollo as the main character, was probably the most dramatic of the 1589 cycle. Rinuccini, the author of the text, outlined a potential plot, from the opening scene which presents the situation (Python has been terrorizing the inhabitants of Delos and they ask Giove for help) through
an anagnorisis (Apollo's appearance and his victorious fight with Python)
to the happy catastrophe (the liberation of Delos from the monster). Of
course, this intermedio is
still quite far from being a rudimentary example of opera: all that
survives of the music are the opening and final choruses, and from the
description of the festivities it appears that the central action, the
fight, was a ballet. Music was still far from representing actions or affections on stage.
Although the director of the festivities was Emilio de'
Cavalieri, a Roman gentleman and a protege of the new Medici Grand Duke
Ferdinando, Giovanni de' Bardi contributed a madrigal for the fourth intermedio which seems to reflect Galilei's instructions. 'Miseri habitator del ciec'Averno' has a very simple musical structure and the use of homophony, where all the parts sing the words simultaneously, seems to guarantee that much-recommended understanding of the poetic text. The change of leadership did however mark the end of Bardi's cultural patronage in Florence: as a protege of Francesco I, he could not hope to maintain his privileges with Ferdinando
given the political opposition which had existed between the two brothers.
Just a year later, in 1590, Bardi moved to Rome, called there by Pope
A key figure in arts patronage was now Jacopo Corsi, a nobleman with mercantile interests and direct involvement in affairs of state. It was under his patronage that only a few years later, around 1595, Rinuccini and Jacopo Peri (another Medici employee who starred in the 1589 intermedi as Arione) started
their experiments which led two years later to the performance of the
first opera, Dafne, first performed for a small audience during Carnival 1598 and 1599. There
are also indications of another three performances in 1600, two in January
and one in August. In 1604, Dafne was again performed at
Palazzo Pitti with music by Giulio Caccini, and for the Mantuan
festivities of 1608 Rinuccini provided the composer Marco da Gagliano
(another Medici employee) with a substantially expanded libretto.
The first 'real' opera, Euridice, on a libretto by
Rinuccini with music by Peri, was performed in Palazzo Pitti the evening
of 6th October 1600, for a female audience, during the festivities
celebrating the wedding of Maria Medici and Henry IV of Navarre. Clearly
the Medici wanted to display the new genre, but it is interesting that no
great emphasis was placed upon its novelty, and being performed for a
reduced audience, it was certainly not the zenith of the celebrations. The
place of honour was instead given to Rinuccini and Peri courtly rivals,
the poet Gabriello Chiabrera and Giulio Caccini: their Rapimento di Cefalo - something
along the line of a dramatically developed intermedio with lavish costumes,
scenery and stage machinery - was the main attraction, a safe bet rather
than a challenge to tradition.
Both Dafne and Euridice, though
traditional from a literary point of view, did turn away from the
established practice of sumptuous theatrical performances to accompany
pivotal events at court. In Rinuccini's hands, the opera libretto did not
allow for the use of machines and lavish costumes, with its setting
borrowing from (Tassian) pastoral, and its characters and plot derived
from Greek mythology through Ovid. The pastoral genre had recently won the
favour of the Medici court. Torquato Tasso's Aminta had been performed in the
Boboli garden in Carnival 1590, during Tasso's visit to Florence as Jacopo
Corsi's guest. Although no certain documentation can be offered, it has been suggested that this performance of Aminta included musical pieces and
intermedi. Subsequently, two pastorals were commissioned by the Medici to Emilio de' Cavalieri and the poetess Laura Guidiccioni, and were performed in 1590-1. In 1595, the year in which the operatic experiments started, was performed
in Pitti Il giuoco della cieca,
extracted and adapted from Guarini's Pastor fido by Guidiccioni and
Cavalieri. Thus Dafne and Euridice, with their landscape of
woods and streams, the transformation of all women into nymphs and of most
of the men into shepherds (with the notable exclusion of the main
characters Apollo and Orfeo), seem to betray a large debt towards
pastoral. In this sense they are both the produce of the Florentine soil
as it appears to be in the last decade of the Cinquecento. And the musical style
used in the new genre seems to connect early opera back to the Camerata
de' Bardi through the key figure of Giulio Caccini.
Caccini published a collection of solo songs entitled Le nuove musiche. At least some of
the pieces included in the collection seem to respond to Bardi's and
Galilei's theories, and Caccini himself, in the preface to the volume,
associates his musical products with the Camerata by indicating that his
songs were first heard and acclaimed by its members, and more
significantly by claiming a greater debt towards cultural debate than
knowledge of music.
Io veramente nei tempi
che fioriva in Firenze la virtuosissima Camerata dell'Illustrissimo Signor
Giovanni Bardi de' Conti di Vernio ]...] avendola frequentata anch'io,
posso dire d'avere appreso più dai loro dotti ragionari, che in più di
trent'anni non ho fatto nel contrappunto; imperò che questi
intendentissimi gentiluomini m'hanno sempre confortato, e con chiarissime
ragioni convinto, a non pregiare quella sorte di musica, che non lasciando
bene intendersi le parole, guasta il concetto et il verso [...] per
accomodarsi al contrappunto, laceramento della poesia, ma ad attenermi a
quella maniera cotanto lodata da Platone et altri filosofi, che
affermarono la musica altro non essere che la favella e il ritmo et il
suono per ultimo, e non per lo contrario, a volere che ella [i.e., music]
possa penetrare nell'altrui intelletto e fare quei mirabili effetti che
ammirano gli scrittori, e che non potevano farsi per il contrappunto nelle
Caccini's 'new music' was in essence the monodic
setting of a given poetic text, that is, a melody sung by a single
performer in a style which, though allowing space for the performer's
skill, did not obstruct the understanding of the words:
Veduto adunque [...] che
tali musiche e musici non davano altro diletto fuor di quello che poteva
l'armonia dare all'udito solo, poi che non potevano esse muovere
l'intelletto senza l'intelligenza delle parole, mi venne pensiero
introdurre una sorte di musica, per cui altri potesse quasi che in armonia
favellare [...] Ne i quali, così ne madrigali come nelle arie, ho sempre
procurata l'imitazione de i concetti delle parole, ricercando quelle corde
più o meno affettuose, secondo i sentimenti di esse, e che particolarmente
avessero grazia, avendo nascosto in esse quanto più ho potuto l'arte del
Monody was not a Florentine invention, nor the creation
of Caccini himself. Other genres such as the villanella and the frottola, as well as the canzonetta and the light madrigal,
had appeared in print for solo voice and instrumental accompaniment
throughout the Cinquecento, and
several volumes of solo songs were published around the same time as
Caccini's Le nuove musiche,
without any particular claim to novelty.
If monody was not a Florentine creation, it still
played an essential role in Florentine operas, since the aesthetic tenet
of the new operatic genre was that music should hold a subservient role,
'accompanying' the poetic text and therefore adopting a style of
declamation half-way between full singing (considered as not appropriate
to dramatic poetry) and normal speaking. This is how Jacopo Peri describes
the new music style needed for setting dramatic poetry:
[...] veduto che si trattava di poesia drammatica e che però si doveva imitar col canto chi parla (e senza dubbio non si parlò mai cantando), stimai che gli antichi Greci e Romani (i quali, secondo l'opinione di molti, cantavano su le scene tragedie intere) usassero un'armonia, che avanzando quella del parlare ordinario, scendesse tanto dalla melodia del cantare che pigliasse
forma di cosa mezzana.
Although not created specifically with opera in mind,
the 'new' solo music had a crucial role in bringing on stage a dramatic
text to be sung in its entirety, since it was necessary to have one
performer for each character. Thus the development and consolidation of
solo song, which was essentially a stylistic issue, and the appearance of
a new genre became intertwined. And if all surviving documents do not
indicate any particular interest for contemporary stage music within the
Camerata de' Bardi, Giulio Caccini, in his preface to Euridice, clearly establishes the
connection with the Camerata by connecting his monodic style (used both
for solo songs and for opera) with what he had learnt participating to
As indicated earlier, the libretto of Dafne was expanded before being
set again to music by another composer, Marco da Gagliano, for the 1608
Mantuan festivities, celebrating the wedding of Francesco I Gonzaga and
Marguerite of Savoy. This transition signals a similar transition that
opera as a genre had undergone. In 1607 Alessandro Striggio, courtly poet
at Mantua, had taken up the myth of Orpheus and transformed it into a
libretto, which was set to music by one of the leading composers of the
time, Claudio Monteverdi. Orfeo was performed at the Academia degli Invaghiti in Mantua, thus emphasizing
the intellectual component of the new genre. The following year, next to
Dafne, the Mantuan court staged
as the zenith of the festivities a new opera, Arianna, on a libretto by
Rinuccini set to music by Monteverdi. The young singer and Monteverdi's
exceptional pupil Caterina Martinelli was intended to sing the part of
Arianna, but her untimely death forced him to look for a replacement in
Virginia Ramponi Andreini, an actress of the Comici Gelosi, the company
employed to perform Giovan Battista Guarini's Idropica.
Arianna became an exemplar amongst contemporary theorists of what opera should be
and of how music and poetry should relate to one another. Giovan Battista
Doni, a cognoscente with a
wide-ranging knowledge of classical culture and contemporary literature as
well as a strong interest in music, saw in the predominance of poetry over
music the only way of rescuing the aesthetic power of vocal music, and of
operatic music in particular. He presented the collaboration between
Rinuccini and Monteverdi for Arianna as the highest point
reached by contemporary music. But the credit for it seems due more to
Rinuccini than to Monteverdi, one of Monteverdi's merits being his
willingness to learn from Rinuccini. In a letter to Marin Mersenne of
August 1638, Doni refers to the Lamento d'Arianna:
Cl. Monteverde il n'est
pas homme de grandes lettres, non plus que les autres musiciens
d'aujordhuy, mais il excelle à faire des melodies pathetiques, merci de la
longue pratique qu'il a eu à Florence de ces beaux esprits des Académies,
mesme du Sieur Rinuccini [...] lequel [...] encores qu'il n'entendist rien
en la musique, contribua plus que Monteverde à la beauté de ceste
Complainte d'Ariadne [...].
According to the description of the 1608 festivities,
the audience was greatly moved by Arianna, and especially by the
nel lamento che fece Arianna sopra lo scoglio abbandonata da Teseo, il quale fu rappresentato con tanto affetto e con sì pietosi modi, che non si trovò ascoltante alcuno che non s'intenerisse, né pur fu una dama che non versasse qualche lagrimetta al suo bel pianto.
The lament was to become a bestseller, the piece of
music to be owned by any music-lover, and the presence of an actress rather than a singer seems to confirm that
operatic wonder indeed originates from skilful acting (an almost
oratorical delivery of the poetic text) rather than from singing. The
focus seems to shift from music to the text. And indeed Arianna can be read with literary
gratification without the music - which has to be the case for the modern
reader, since the libretto was published, but not the score:
O Teseo, o Teseo
sì che mio ti vo' dir, che mio pur sei,
benché t'involi, ahi
crudo! agli occhi miei.
Volgiti Teseo mio,
volgiti Teseo, oh
volgiti indietro a rimirar colei
che lasciato ha per te la
patria e 'l regno,
e in queste arene ancora,
cibo di fere dispietate
lascerà l'ossa ignude.
This excerpt from the lamento offers a case in point.
Although the frontispiece of the print defines Arianna as a 'tragedia per
musica', the libretto does not show that gravitas of poetic rhythm and
language characterizing Renaissance and early-Baroque tragedies. However,
the heavy presence of rhetorical figures (in this case, the anaphora
'Volgiti Teseo mio, volgiti Teseo, oh Dio!, volgiti indietro...'), a
madrigalian rhythm, typical of Rinuccini's libretti, alternating seven-
and eleven-syllable lines and thus diluting the poetic metre, and a clear
rhyming scheme place Rinuccini's libretti away from both the prose-like
style of tragedy and upbeat 'poesia per musica'. A comparison with the
opening of a canzonetta is
ch'io son ferito a morte.
Rinuccini's libretti are all devised as a 'chain of
madrigals', with plenty of opportunities for lyric effusions by the main
characters and the chorus. Orfeo's first appearance on stage, for example,
is marked by one of those lyric moments in which he reveals how Nature
seems to have sympathized with all his feelings - a trait common to both
the poetic and the pastoral traditions:
Antri, ch'a miei
rimbombaste dolenti, amiche piagge,
e voi, piante
ch'a le dogliose rime
piegaste per pietà l'altere
non fia più no che la mia nobil cetra
con flebil canto a
ineffabil mercede, almi diletti
oggi al mio pianto impetra.
Even the conflict between Honour and Love, at the heart
of the plot in Arianna, creates
ample opportunities for lyricism. Harking back to Tasso's Aminta, Arianna echoes the pastoral in its
structural division between the inhabitants of the city (Teseo and the
Consigliero) and the inhabitants of Nasso, the island bearing the same
significance as the pastoral woods. After having witnessed the furtive
departure of Teseo's ships, the chorus of Fishermen proclaims how
fortunate they are not to live in the city - a chorus close to Aminta's 'O bell'età dell'Oro'
both in its liquid sonority and in its content:
noi che, lontan da le città superbe,
a le bell'onde, a l'erbe
guidiam tranquilli i mansueti armenti,
o pur nel sen di Teti
tendiam al muto gregge o lacci o reti.
Another element which contributes to the emphasis of
lyrical over dramatic elements is the universality of the affections
represented. Arianna's grief at finding herself deserted, like Orfeo's joy
in marrying Euridice or his despair at having lost her, gains intensity
from the plot, but can be appreciated equally with or without the music,
even if taken away from its dramatic context. In a truly dramatic
libretto, it would not be possible to extract a part of it from its
context and still be able to fully appreciate it. A case in point is an
opera not chronologically distant from the early Florentine examples, but
responding to entirely different stimuli. L'incoronazione di Poppea, on a
libretto by Gian Francesco Busenello, was performed in Venice in 1642 with
music by various composers, among whom was Claudio Monteverdi. Venice had
opened the first 'public' opera house in 1637, thus removing opera from
within the boundaries of the court. Opera in Venice would acquire those characteristics which late became
typical of the genre: a libretto with a varying degree of poetic quality
but always functional to music and the staging; and music which gives
ample possibilities for the performers to display their vocal skills. The final duet of the Incoronazione, a love song between
Poppea and Nerone, shows how extracting passages from an opera may lead to
a substantial alteration of their meaning.
Nerone & Poppea:
Pur ti miro, pur ti godo,
pur ti stringo, pur
più non peno, più non moro,
o mia vita, o mio tesoro.
Taken out of its dramatic context, this could simply be
the 'innocent' duet between two lovers who are finally reunited. But
knowing who these lovers are, and all that had to happen for them to be
'united', casts a totally different and somewhat sinister light on it. The
Incoronazione is presented in
the prologue as a triumph of Love over Fortune: and indeed
the love of Poppea and
Nerone triumphs over all obstacles - over objections of state, over
legality and morality. But the dark side of that victory is equally
present; Poppea seems also to
celebrate the defeat of reason. Seneca dies, Ottavia [Nerone's wife] is
exiled [...]. The apparent immorality of the denouement casts a shadow over
our perception of the work. Is it really love that triumphs or is it mere
lust, or Poppea's greed for power?
Nothing similar would have happened with Euridice or even the 'tragic' Arianna, where everything was
exactly as it first appeared. Just over three decades separate the opera which moved to tears the
Mantuan audience from the one presenting such a contradictory and complex
spectacle to the paying Venetian public.
In general terms, opera was to become all that the Florentines were reacting against. Early Florentine opera was essentially an intellectual pleasure, with very few concessions to the ear or the eye in the name of a more valuable
aesthetic pleasure to be had through an empowering of poetry and music.
Philosophers provide the aesthetic tenets for a genre which, like
classical Renaissance tragedy, sees as its main objective to educate,
while entertaining (delectando
iuvari). Later on, with Jacopo Corsi, this same idea prompts
experiments on the stage and the consequent creation of a new literary
form, the libretto, written to be accompanied by music. However, the
libretto, especially in Rinuccini's hands, has very feeble dramatic
elements and favours lyric effusions over developing a more complex
However, opera as we know it is certainly closer to the
Venetian examples: a libretto written not to satisfy the requirements of
poetry but those of drama and music, though this does not necessarily
produce a libretto without literary or poetic quality; and music which
takes over the poetic component with its power of captivating the audience
emotionally and displaying the bravura of the performers. The
difference between these and the first Florentine operas seems to prove
that opera in Florence was indeed something else, the product of an
essentially literary inspiration which would not survive long in
 Pietro de' Bardi, 'Lettera a Giovan Battista Doni sull'origine del
melodramma'  in Angelo Solerti, Le origini del melodramma.
Testimonianze dei contemporanei (Turin: Bocca, 1903; facs. edn.
Hildesheim & New York: Georg Olms Verlag, 1969), p. 144.
 Pietro de' Bardi, 'Lettera a Giovan Battista Doni', p. 145.
 Pietro della Valle, 'Della musica dell'età nostra che non è punto
inferiore, anzi è migliore di quella dell'età passata' , in Solerti,
Le origini del melodramma, p.
153. If Gesualdo is referred to as the 'father' of the 'cantare
affettuoso', we still need to note that he did not venture on to the
operatic ground, nor did he publish compositions for solo voice à la Caccini: the 'cantare
affettuoso' refers to his use of the polyphonic style in a powerful
rendition of the poetic text.
 Giulio Caccini, Preface to Euridice, in Solerti, Le origini del melodramma, p.
 For a complete biography of Rinuccini, see Francesco Raccamadoro Ramelli,
Ottavio Rinuccini. Studio
biografico e critico (Fabriano: Gentile, 1900).
 See Claude V. Palisca, 'Girolamo Mei: Mentor to the Florentine Camerata',
The Musical Quarterly, 40
 Giovanni de' Bardi, 'Discorso mandato a Giulio Caccini detto Romano sopra
la musica antica e 'l cantar bene', in Giovan Battista Doni, Lyra Barberina, edited by Anton
Francesco Gori (Florence: Stamperia Imperiale, 1763; facs. Edn. Bologna:
Forni, 1974), pp. 233-248.
 I am referring here to Vincenzo Galilei's 'Dialogo della musica antica et
della moderna', published in 1581, and to his 'Discorso [...] intorno
all'opere di Gioseffo Zarlino', published in 1589; the latter is an open
attack on Zarlino, one of the leading music theorist, and through him on
 Ottavio Rinuccini, 'Rinaldo e il Tasso', in Angelo Solerti, Gli albori del melodramma (Turin:
Bocca, 1903; facs. edn. Bologna: Forni, 1976).
 In addition to the Maschere
d'Amazzoni and Rinaldo e il
Tasso, Rinuccini wrote the Ballo di Bergere (1590), the Mascherata degli Accecati and the
Mascherata di Stelle (both
1596) and the Mascherata di Donne
tradite, possibly written between 1596 and 1598. See Robert Lamar
Weaver & Norma Wright Weaver, A
Chronology of Music in the Florentine Theatre 1590-1750 (Detroit:
Detroit Studies in Music Bibliography number 38, 1978).
 For a recounting of all the events leading to the 1589 wedding as well as
its festivities, see James M. Saslow, The Medici wedding of 1589. Florentine
Festival as 'Theatrum Mundi' (New Haven & London: Yale University
 For a critical comment on this issue, see Nino Pirrotta, Li due Orfei (Turin: Einaudi,
1975), p. 249; for the description of the 1589 festivals, see Raffaello
dell'apparato e degli intermedi [...] (Florence: Padovani,
 See Tim Carter, 'Music and Patronage in Late Sixteenth-Century Florence:
The Case of Jacopo Corsi (1561-1602)', I Tatti Studies: Essays in the
Renaissance, 1 (1985), 57-104.
 According to Peri in his preface to Euridice, Dafne was conceived as a 'semplice
pruova di quello che potesse il canto dell'età nostra' (Jacopo Peri,
Preface to Euridice, in
Solerti, Le origini del
melodramma), p. 40.
 See Nino Pirrotta, 'Temperaments and Tendencies in the Florentine
Camerata', The Musical
Quarterly, 40 (1954), 169-189.
 Pierantonio Serassi and Solerti do not mention Tasso's visit to Florence
in their biography of the poet: see Pierantonio Serassi, La vita di Torquato Tasso (Rome:
Paglierini, 1785), and Angelo Solerti, Vita di Torquato Tasso (Turin
& Rome: Loescher, 1895).
 The two lost pastorals are Il
satiro and La disperazione di
Fileno. See Warren Kirkendale, 'L'opera in musica prima del Peri: le
pastorali perdute di Laura Guidiccioni ed Emilio de' Cavalieri', in Firenze e la Toscana dei Medici
nell'Europa del '500 (Florence: Olschki, 1983).
 Giulio Caccini, preface to Le nuove
musiche (Florence: Marescotti, 1602), in Solerti, Le origini del melodramma, p.
 Giulio Caccini, preface to Le Nuove
Musiche, p. 57 & p. 59.
 See Tim Carter, Music in Late
Renaissance and Early Baroque Italy (London: B.T. Batsford Limited,
1992), pp. 187-201.
 Jacopo Peri, preface to Euridice (Florence: Marescotti,
1600), in Solerti, Le origini del
melodramma, pp. 43-44.
 See Edmond Strainchamps, 'The Life and Death of Caterina Martinelli: New
Light on Monteverdi's Arianna',
Early Music History, 5 (1993),
 See Marin Mersenne, Correspondance
du P. Marin Mersenne, religieux minime, edited by Cornelis de Waard,
12 vols (Paris: CNRS, 1932-72), VIII (1964), 7-25.
 Federico Follino, Compendio delle
sontuose feste fatte l'anno M.DC.VIII nella città di Mantova per le reali
nosse del Serenissimo Principe D. Francesco Gonzaga con la Serenissima
Infante Margherita di Savoia (Mantua: Osanna, 1608); as quoted in
Paolo Fabbri, Monteverdi (Turin: EDT, 1985), p. 133.
 '[L'Arianna] fu tanto gradita
che non è stata casa, la quale, avendo cembali o tiorbe in casa, non
avesse il lamento di quella.' Severo Bonini, Prima parte dei discorsi e regole
sovra la musica (Florence, Biblioteca Riccardiana, n° 2218); as quoted
in Solerti, Le origini del
melodramma, p. 139.
 Ottavio Rinuccini, Arianna, in
Teatro del Seicento, edited by
Luigi Fassò (Milan & Naples: Ricciardi, 1956), pp. 77-78.
 Ottavio Rinuccini, Poesie (Florence: Giunti, 1622), p. 191.
 Ottavio Rinuccini, Euridice, in
Teatro del Seicento, pp.
 Ottavio Rinuccini, Arianna, p.
 It has been suggested that the opening of opera houses, with its
consequent change of patronage systems and its move towards different
political institutions and cultural environments, can be used to argue
that the history of opera should start from this point onwards, leaving
aside as a totally different genre the courtly opera sponsored by
Florence, Mantua and the Papal court. See Tim Carter, Music in Late Renaissance and Early
Baroque Italy, p. 218.
 For an analysis of Venetian opera, see Ellen Rosand, Opera in Seventheenth-Century Venice:
The Creation of a Genre (Los Angeles & London: University of
California Press, 1991).
 Ellen Rosand, 'Seneca and the Interpretation of L'Incoronazione di Poppea', Journal of the American Musicological
Society, 38 (1985), 34; for an analysis of L'Incoronazione within its
Venetian cultural context, see Iain Fenlon & Peter N. Miller, The Song of the Soul: Understanding
'Poppea' (London: Royal Musical Association, 1992).
 The traditional understanding of Arianna as the deserted heroine with whom
both the authors and the audience sympathize, has been, for example,
substantially challenged by recent feminist approaches to historical
musicology: see Susan Cusick, '"There Was Not One Lady Who Failed to Shed
a Tear." Arianna's Lament and the Construction of Modern Womanhood', Early Music, 22 (1994),
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