His opera, "Orfeo," 1608, had an orchestra of two harpsichords, two bass viols, two violas di gamba, ten tenor viols, two little French violins, one harp, two large guitars, three small organs, four trombones, two cornets, one piccolo, one clarion and three trumpets. In "Tancredi e Clorinda," produced in Venice, in 1624, a string quartet indicated the galloping of horses, a prototype of the "Ride of the Valkyries." Like Abbe Liszt, he took holy orders late in life, without ceasing to compose. At seventy-four years of age, when the fire of his genius burned brightly as ever, he wrote his last opera "L'Incoronazione di Poppea." It may truly be said that Monteverde was the great operatic reformer, the Wagner, of the seventeenth century, as Gluck was of the eighteenth. An epoch-making event in opera history was the opening, in 1637, of the first public opera house in commercial Venice whose wealth afforded her citizens leisure to cultivate art. Soon popular demand led to the erection of many Italian opera-houses. At the same time growing taste for magnificence of stage setting and brilliant, dazzling, even extravagant song effects, caused neglect of Academician principles. The learned and gifted Neapolitan composer, Alessandro Scarlatti, father of the famous harpsichordist, gave an impulse in his operas, during the last quarter of the century, to sensuous charm and beauty of melody. He invested recitative with classic value, enlarged the aria, and devised the da capo which became a menace to dramatic truth. In France, the troubadours had borne melody into the domain of sentiment, and laid a solid foundation for musical growth. Adam de la Halle's pastoral, "Robin et Marion," was an actual prototype of the opera. During the seventeenth century Corneille and Moliere refined the dramatic taste of their compatriots. Attempts to introduce Italian opera only resulted in arousing a desire for an opera in accord with French ideals.