ey lavished their treasures of art and money to
make such spectacles as the modern stagemen of London and Paris cannot
approach.

In Evelyn's diary there is an entry describing opera at Venice in 1645.
"This night, having with my lord Bruce taken our places before, we
went to the opera, where comedies and other plays are represented
in recitative musiq by the most excellent musicians, vocal and
instrumental, with variety of scenes painted and contrived with no
lesse art of perspective, and machines for flying in the aire, and other
wonderful motions; taken together it is one of the most magnificent and
expensive diversions the wit of man can invent. The history was Hercules
in Lydia. The sceanes changed thirteen times. The famous voices, Anna
Rencia, a Roman and reputed the best treble of women; but there was
a Eunuch who in my opinion surpassed her; also a Genoise that in my
judgment sung an incomparable base. They held us by the eyes and ears
till two o'clock i' the morning." Again he writes of the carnival
of 1640: "The comedians have liberty and the operas are open; witty
pasquils are thrown about, and the mountebanks have their stages at
every corner. The diversion which chiefly took me up was three noble
operas, where were most excellent voices and music, the most celebrated
of which was the famous and beautiful Anna Rencia, whom we invited to
a fish dinner after four daies in Lent, when they had given over at the
theatre." Old Evelyn then narrates how he and his noble friend took the
lovely diner out on a junketing, and got shot at with blunderbusses from
the gondola of an infuriated rival.

Opera progressed toward a fixed status with a swiftness hardly
paralleled in the history of any art. The soil was rich and fully
prepared for the growth, and the fecund root, once planted, shot into
a luxuriant beauty and symmetry, which nothing could check. The Church
wisely gave up its opposition, and henceforth there was nothing to
impede the progress of a product which spread and naturalized itself
in England, France, and Germany. The inventive genius of Monteverde,
Carissimi, Scarlatti (the friend and rival of Handel), Durante, and
Leonardo Leo, perfected the forms of the opera nearly as we have them
today. A line of brilliant composers in the school of Durante and Leo
brings us down through Pergolesi, Derni, Terradiglias, Jomelli, Traetta,
Ciccio di Majo, Galuppi, and Giuglielmi, to the most distinguished of
the early