ight in them for a lofty
appreciation of the drama and art. The reform of the Florentine coterie
conquered Italy for less than fifty years. The return to showy
productions, to the congregation of purely theatric effects, scenic as
well as musical, was swift, and the student of operatic art can to-day
discern with facility that the invention of the Florentines was soon
reduced to the state of a thread to bind together episodes of pictorial
and vocal display. But in the beginning it was unquestionably the
outcome of a hostility to these very things, or at any rate to their
merely spectacular employment.

Peri, Caccini, Bardi and others of the Florentine "camerata" were
engaged as composers, stage managers, actors and singers in many of the
elaborate court spectacles, intermezzi and madrigal dramas produced
toward the end of the sixteenth century. Peri and Caccini were
professional singers, and their experiences were not only those of
students, but also those of practitioners. Their revolt against the
contrapuntal lyric drama was largely, though not wholly, based on
deep-seated objection to the unintelligibility of the text. It does not
require profound consideration to bring us to the opinion that the
method of Vecchi was in part an attempt to overcome the innate defect of
the polyphonic style in this matter of intelligibility. The resort to
the spoken text on the stage while the music was sung behind the scenes
appears on the face of it to have been compelled by a wish for some
method of conveying the meaning of the poet to the audience.

Why, then, did not these young reformers find at hand in the madrigal
arranged for solo voice the suggestion for their line of lyric
reconstruction? Partly by reason of the confusion caused by obedience to
old polyphonic customs in making the accompaniments, and partly because
the madrigal had become a field for the display of vocal agility.
Already the development of colorature singing had reached a high degree
of perfection. Already the singer sought to astonish the hearer by
covering an air with a bewildering variety of ornaments. The time was
not far off when the opera prima donna was to become the incarnation of
the artistic sensuousness which had beguiled Italy with a dream of
Grecian resurrection. The way had been well built, for the attention of
the fathers of the Roman church had been turned early to the necessity
of system in the delivery of the liturgical chants. The study o