Florence, the Tuscan capital, was the crucible of what later became known as the Italian Renaissance. This cultural movement, apart from its social and political upheaval, embraced the artistic developments of painters, sculptors, architect-engineers, poets and scholars who have long since become iconic. Opera also had its origins in this Italian city state. Late in the C16th, this new form of secular entertainment emerged, principally for courtly distraction. It probably grew out of the intermezzi, where drama, music, costumes, action and scenery blended to produce a coherent narrative form.Soon, other Northern Italian city states became enthusiastic about this new divertissement, especially Mantua, Rome and Venice. Indeed, this "City of Bridges" rapidly became the centre of opera, where the first commercial opera house opened in 1637, thus removing the art form from courtly circles and making it more accessible to a wider public or at least, for those who could afford it.
It is Giulio Caccini, a tenor and composer in the employ of the Medici family, who is generally regarded as one of the creators of the genre. Together with Jacopo Peri, he promoted the style recitativo, an approach where the words could be clearly understood, the rhythms of natural speech would be followed, and the music would convey the feeling of a whole passage.
Eurydice (1600) is considered to be the second work of modern opera, and the first such musical drama to survive to the present day. Composed by Peri and Caccini, it is based on Ovid's Metamorphoses. (The first opera, Dafne, was written by the same authors in 1597 but the work has been lost.) It was created for the occasion of the wedding of Maria de Medici to Henry IV of France. Claudio Monteverdi went on to develop the genre. We shall look at this composer in more detail in our section on Opera in the C17th.
Eurydice (1600) is considered to be the second work of modern opera, and the first such musical drama to survive to the present day. Composed by Peri and Caccini, it is based on Ovid's Metamorphoses. (The first opera, Dafne, was written by the same authors in 1597 but the work has been lost.) It was created for the occasion of the wedding of Maria de Medici to Henry IV of France. Claudio Monteverdi went on to develop the genre. We shall look at this composer in more detail in our section on Opera in the C17th.
Sources:
Gombrich, E.H. 1979. The Story of Art. Oxford, UK: Phaidon Press Ltd.Orrey L. and R. Milnes. 2005. Opera: A Concise History. London, UK: Thames and Hudson.
Image: Florence dome at www.reformationtours.com/site/490868/page/927722
