orks. Some
idea of the musical activity which prevailed may be gathered from the
fact that while the first public theatre was opened in 1637, before the
close of the century there were no less than eleven theatres in the city
devoted to the performance of opera alone.

Meanwhile the enthusiasm for the new art-form spread through the cities
of Italy. According to an extant letter of Salvator Rosa's, opera was in
full swing in Rome during the Carnival of 1652. The first opera of
Provenzale, the founder of the Neapolitan school, was produced in 1658.
Bologna, Milan, Parma, and other cities soon followed suit. France, too,
was not behindhand, but there the development of the art soon deserved
the name a new school of opera, distinct in many important particulars
from its parent in Italy. The French nobles who saw the performance of
Peri's 'Euridice' at the marriage of Henry IV. may have carried back
tales of its splendour and beauty to their own country, but Paris was
not as yet ripe for opera. Not until 1647 did the French Court make the
acquaintance of the new art which was afterwards to win some of its most
brilliant triumphs in their city. In that year a performance of Peri's
'Euridice' (which, in spite of newer developments, had not lost its
popularity) was given in Paris under the patronage of Cadinal Mazarin.
This was followed by Cavalli's 'Serse,' conducted by the composer
himself. These performances quickened the latent genius of the French
people, and Robert Cambert, the founder of their school, hastened to
produce operas, which, though bearing traces of Italian influence, were
nevertheless distinctively French in manner and method. His works, two
of which are known to us, 'Pomone' and 'Les Peines et les Plaisirs de
l'Amour,' were to a certain extent a development of the masques which
had been popular in Paris for many years. They are pastoral and
allegorical in subject, and are often merely a vehicle for fulsome
adulation of the 'Roi Soleil.' But in construction they are operas pure
and simple. There is no spoken dialogue, and the music is continuous
from first to last. Cambert's operas were very successful, and in
conjunction with his librettist Perrin he received a charter from the
King in 1669, giving him the sole right of establishing opera-houses in
the kingdom. Quarrels, however, ensued. Cambert and Perrin separated.
The charter was revoked, or rather granted to a new-comer, Giovanni
Battista Lulli, and Cam