dramatic representation at a court marriage, in 1590, in which the
artificially constructed ecclesiastical music illy fitted the text
lauding the bride's loveliness, gave a new impulse to the "Academy"
efforts. Soon there was produced at court, by a company of highborn
ladies and gentlemen, two pastoral plays: "Il Satiro" and "La
Disperazione di Fileno," so set to music that they could be sung or
declaimed throughout. The author of the text was Signora Laura
Guidiccioni, of the Lucchesini family, renowned in her day for her
poetic gifts and brilliant attainments. Signor Emilio del Cavalieri was
the composer, and he triumphantly announced his music as that "of the
ancients recovered," having power to "excite grief, pity, joy and
pleasure."

These two "musical dramas," as they were called, contained the germs of
modern opera, despite their crudities of harmony and monotonous melody.
That noble songstress, Vittoria Archilei, known as "Euterpe" among her
Italian contemporaries, greatly enhanced the success of the new venture
with her superb voice, artistic skill, musical fire and splendid
intelligence. She "whose excellence in music is generally known," as we
are told, and who was able to "draw tears from her audience" at the
right moment, also aroused enthusiasm for a third work of a similar
nature by the same authors, "Il Giuco della Cieco," that appeared in
1595.

Besides being the first to tell the entire story of a play musically and
to utilize the solo, Cavalieri introduced various ornaments into vocal
music and increased the demands on instrumentation. He did not succeed,
however, in satisfying the Academicians with his attempt to grasp the
medium between speech and song, and his choruses were thought tedious
because of their employment of the intricate polyphonic style. Further
reform was desired.

This came through Jacopo Peri, maestro at the Medician court, and after
1601 at the court of Ferrara. In studying Greek dramas, as he states in
one of his writings, he became convinced that their musical expression
was that of highly colored emotional speech. Closely observing diverse
modes of utterance in daily life, he endeavored to reproduce soft,
gentle words by half-spoken, half-sung tones, sustained by an
instrumental bass, and to express excitement by extended intervals,
lively tempo and suitable distribution of dissonances in the
accompaniment. To him may be attributed the first dramatic recitative.
It appeare