Upon the death of the ducal music director, Ingeneri, Monteverde
succeeded to the place. This appears to have been in 1603, according to
the preface to the sixth set of his madrigals (in 1614), in which he
speaks of having been in the service of the Duke of Mantua ten years.
The famous "representative style," in other words, dramatic music, had
already been discovered, as recounted at greater length in the essay
upon Italy. It is sufficient for our present purpose to compare the
dates. It was about 1595 that Vincenzo Gallilei intoned at Count Bardi's
his epoch-making monologue upon "Ugolino," and in 1597 the first opera,
"Dafne," was privately performed at the house of Count Corsi. In 1600
the first opera, "Eurydice," the poem by Rinuccini and music by Jacopo
Peri, was publicly performed upon the occasion of the marriage of Henry
IV., of France, to Catherine de Medici. This work has the double honor
of having been the first opera ever publicly performed and the first
opera ever printed. A copy of the original edition of A. D. 1600 is
now in the Newberry Library of Chicago. The fundamental problem of the
new style was that of furnishing appropriate musical cadences for the
impressive utterance of the words of the text. Hence the musical handling
of "Eurydice" is very meagre. There is only one short instrumental
ritornello, and only one short aria, of sixteen measures. Almost the
entire remainder of the work is in a rather stiff and formal recitative.
No attempt is made at instrumental coloring. The accompaniment is simply
intended to support the voices and assure the singers of their pitch,
quite after the ideas advanced by Artistoxenos, and applied universally
in Greek tragedy. The tonality in "Eurydice" is almost wholly minor.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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