, the knowledge of
music has flourished principally in Italy, the mother of learning and
of arts[2]; that poetry and painting have been there restored, and so
cultivated by Italian masters, that all Europe has been enriched out
of their treasury; and the other parts of it, in relation to those
delightful arts, are still as much provincial to Italy, as they were
in the time of the Roman empire. Their first operas seem to have been
intended for the celebration of the marriages of their princes, or for
the magnificence of some general time of joy; accordingly, the
expences of them were from the purse of the sovereign, or of the
republic, as they are still practised at Venice, Rome, and at other
places, at their carnivals. Savoy and Florence have often used them in
their courts, at the weddings of their dukes; and at Turin
particularly, was performed the "Pastor Fido," written by the famous
Guarini, which is a pastoral opera made to solemnise the marriage of a
Duke of Savoy. The prologue of it has given the design to all the
French; which is a compliment to the sovereign power by some god or
goddess; so that it looks no less than a kind of embassy from heaven
to earth. I said in the beginning of this preface, that the persons
represented in operas are generally gods, goddesses, and heroes
descended from them, who are supposed to be their peculiar care; which
hinders not, but that meaner persons may sometimes gracefully be
introduced, especially if they have relation to those first times,
which poets call the Golden Age; wherein, by reason of their
innocence, those happy mortals were supposed to have had a more
familiar intercourse with superior beings; and therefore shepherds
might reasonably be admitted, as of all callings the most innocent,
the most happy, and who, by reason of the spare time they had, in
their almost idle employment, had most leisure to make verses, and to
be in love; without somewhat of which passion, no opera can possibly
subsist.

It is almost needless to speak any thing of that noble language, in
which this musical drama was first invented and performed. All, who
are conversant in the Italian, cannot but observe, that it is the
softest, the sweetest, the most harmonious, not only of any modern
tongue, but even beyond any of the learned. It seems indeed to have
been invented for the sake of poetry and music; the vowels are so
abounding in all words, especially in terminations of them, that,
exceptin