Some Forerunners of Italian Opera

A closer examination of the musical reforms instituted by the camerata which met at the Vernio and Corsi palaces will convince us that they were directed toward two objects; fir...

The modern entertainment called opera is a child of the Roman Catholic Church. What might be described as operatic tendencies in the music of worship date further back than the...

In the year 1472 the Cardinal Francesco Gonzaga, who had stayed long in Bologna, returned to Mantua. He was received with jubilant celebrations. There were banquets, processions...

In the midst of more imposing chronicles bearing upon the growth of Italy the student of her history is likely to lose sight of the little Marquisate of Mantua. Yet its story is...

The failure of the vocal solo in the field of artistic music of Europe might be traced to the establishment of the unisonal chant in the service of the Roman Catholic Church. Ye...

It becomes now the duty of the author to make some examination of the music of this first lyric drama. But here we unfortunately find ourselves adrift upon a windless ocean. We...

Throughout the fifteenth century the lyric drama of Italy continued to be a denizen of courts and to be saturated with what has been called the "passionate sensualism" of the It...

The non-existence of the drama in the Middle Ages is one of the strikingly significant deficiencies of the period. The illiterate condition of the people, and even of the nobili...

Leaving D'Ancona, Vasari and the others in their confusion of dates, we find ourselves provided with a satisfactory point of departure and with some facts well defined. The drif...

The "Orfeo" was performed in a hall of the castle. The lyric dramas of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were all presented in private. There were no opera houses, and the t...

With such a simple and dignified beginning as that of the "Orfeo" how came the lyric drama of the next century to wander into such sensuous luxuriance, such spectacular extravag...

The fully developed madrigal drama of the latter years of the sixteenth century was an art form entirely dissimilar to anything known to the modern stage, and, as we shall prese...

That there was some sort of an orchestra in the "Orfeo" is probable, though it is not wholly certain. The letter of the Envoy Pauluzo on the performance of Ariosto's "Suppositi"...

An illuminative fact in the history of the madrigal drama is the growth of the comic element. Poliziano's dream of Arcadia was perhaps neither deep nor passionate, but it was at...

While the madrigal drama was in the ripeness of its glory the young Florentine coterie which brought the opera to birth was engaged in its experiments with monody. The history o...