No one would dispute that the first operatic masterpiece was Monteverdi's L'Orfeo, which was first performed in Mantua in 1607. But establishing what should be regarded as the very first opera of all, who composed it, and what that work consisted of, is much less straightforward. It is hard to pinpoint precisely just where the intermedi – the musical and theatrical entertainments that were performed between the acts of plays in Italian courts on special occasions – left off, and where opera as a dramatic form in its own right took over. But it's generally agreed that, in Florence in 1597, Jacopo Peri and the writer Ottavio Rinuccini put on a version of the story of Apollo and Daphne, which was the first work to satisfy most of the criteria we associate now with opera.
Only small fragments of that exist now, though, and the first opera to survive complete was another collaboration between Peri and Rinuccini, Euridice, which was first performed, again in Florence, in 1600. But exactly what was played and sung on that occasion is uncertain, too, for another composer, the more assertive, apparently self-serving Giulio Caccini, was working on his own version of the Euridice libretto and managed to get some of that work into the performance. He then contrived to have his completed opera published first, some six weeks before Peri's.
That is the basis of the realisation that Rinaldo Alessandrini and his group perform here. Italian baroque specialists maintain that Caccini was a less significant composer than Peri, and that he was less sophisticated in his melodic writing, but on the evidence of this disc, which features some wonderfully characterful singing led by Silvia Frigato as Euridice and Furio Zanasi as Orfeo, his Euridice is still a piece of powerfully direct music theatre; it would be fascinating to see it on stage. The long stretches of recitative, interspersed with brief, aria-like episodes and even more occasional choruses, unfold the narrative with minimal fuss, so that the story-telling power of the music is never compromised. It's a must for anyone curious about the beginnings of opera in the early 17th century.