rinted here, but should be
read by all interested in the early history of opera.

With the production of 'Euridice' the history of opera may be said to
begin; but if the new art-form had depended only upon the efforts of
Peri and his friends, it must soon have languished and died. With all
their enthusiasm, the little band of Florentines had too slight an
acquaintance with the science of music to give proper effect to the
ideas which they originated. Peri built the ship, but it was reserved
for the genius of Claudio Monteverde to launch it upon a wider ocean
than his predecessor could have dreamed of. Monteverde had been trained
in the polyphonic school of Palestrina, but his genius had never
acquiesced in the rules and restrictions in which the older masters
delighted. He was a poor contrapuntist, and his madrigals are chiefly
interesting as a proof of how ill the novel harmonies of which he was
the discoverer accorded with the severe purity of the older school But
in the new art he found the field his genius required. What had been
weakness and license in the madrigal became strength and beauty in the
opera. The new wine was put into new bottles, and both were preserved.
Monteverde produced his 'Arianna' in 1607, and his 'Orfeo' in 1608, and
with these two works started opera upon the path of development which
was to culminate in the works of Wagner. 'Arianna,' which, according to
Marco da Gagliano, himself a rival composer of high ability, 'visibly
moved all the theatre to tears,' is lost to us save for a few
quotations; but 'Orfeo' is in existence, and has recently been reprinted
in Germany. A glance at the score shows what a gulf separates this work
from Peri's treatment of the same story. Monteverde, with his orchestra
of thirty-nine instruments--brass, wood, and strings complete--his rich
and brilliant harmonies, sounding so strangely beautiful to ears
accustomed only to the severity of the polyphonic school, and his
delicious and affecting melodies, sometimes rising almost to the dignity
of an aria, must have seemed something more than human to the eager
Venetians as they listened for the first time to music as rich in colour
as the gleaming marbles of the Ca d'Oro or the radiant canvases of
Titian and Giorgione.

The success of Monteverde had its natural result. He soon had pupils
and imitators by the score. The Venetians speedily discovered that they
had an inherent taste for opera, and the musicians of the d