publication of
mocking comment. Photographic musical imitations of the noises of
battles, the songs of birds and the cries of a great city were certain
to be succeeded by the adaptation to the uses of dramatic action of the
musical means developed in these and this adaptation led the way
directly into the realm of the comic lyric drama.

The pomp and circumstance of the gorgeous spectacles which we examined
in the preceding chapter were cherished by the traditions of the Italian
court stage and were not obliterated even in the new species of lyric
comedy. But there was far less to dazzle the eye in the comic
performances, and even in this they offered a certain novelty to the
consideration of Italian audiences. The court spectacles, to be sure,
did not go out of existence. We meet them in all their brilliancy in the
early years of the seventeenth century, and at the same time we find
them copied in a somewhat modified form in the spectacular productions
of the young Italian opera houses. On the other hand, when the
Florentine coterie created dramatic recitative, it was to use it in a
drama wholly serious and poetic in purpose. It was not till some years
later that recitative acquired sufficient flexibility to fit itself into
the plan of the rapidly growing opera buffa. Yet even in this lyric
species we discern something of the large influence of the humorous
madrigal play, for in time the comic opera and the ballet spectacle both
found homes after public opera houses had been thrown open to an eager
public. Physical realism, the humors of the streets and satiric assaults
upon the life of the courts made excellent materials for the
entertainment of the Italian mind, especially at such a time as the
close of the sixteenth century, when the country had reached the
completion of that state described by Symonds:

"The intellectual and social life of the Italians, though much
reduced in vigor, was therefore still, as formerly, concentrated in
cities marked by distinct local qualities and boastful of their
ancient glories. The courts of Ferrara and Urbino continued to form
centers for literary and artistic coteries. Venice remained the
stronghold of mental unrestraint and moral license, where thinkers
uttered their thoughts with tolerable freedom and libertines
indulged their tastes unhindered. Rome early assumed novel airs of
piety, and external conformity to austere patterns became the
fashion here. Yet