The invention of dramatic recitative near the close of the sixteenth century produced a marked effect on oratorio. It very quickly took the place of the dialogue, and thenceforward for many years there was little difference between opera and oratorio except in the nature of their subjects. The first oratorio with dramatic recitative, of which any account has come down to us, was "L'Anima e Corpo," written by Laura Guidiccioni and composed by Emilio del Cavaliere, one of the little band of musical explorers who gave us opera. This oratorio was performed in Rome in 1600. The orchestra, consisting of a double lyre, a harpsichord, a large guitar, and two flutes, was placed behind the scenes, and the oratorio was presented as a musical drama. The chorus sat on the stage, but when singing arose and made appropriate gestures. Complete stage directions were given in the work for the action of the various characters. The oratorio ended with a chorus "to be sung, accompanied sedately and reverentially by the dance," and there was provision for a ballet, "enlivened with capers or _entrechats_." The new form of religious drama soon won its way to general appreciation, and composers were not slow to avail themselves of the opportunities it gave them. Giovanni Carissimi (1582-1672) wrote a number of oratorios, excellent for their time, among them "Jephthah," "Solomon's Judgment," "Belshazzar," and "David and Jonathan." Carissimi made great improvements in the recitative, giving it more character and real musical expressiveness than his predecessors had. He also showed much skill in his choral writing, which was not so completely polyphonic as that of the earlier church writers. He often used bold successions of broad and simple chords and often his writing for the voices is much like that of Handel, a century later. On the whole his work shows a tendency to abandon a close adherence to the methods of the early opera composers and to move toward the style subsequently formulated by Handel. Alessandro Stradella (1645(?)-1681(?)) and Antonio Cesti (1620-?), the latter, a pupil of Carissimi, did much toward developing the choral part of the oratorio. Dr. Parry says: "Stradella had a very remarkable instinct for choral effect, and even piling up progressions into a climax; and his solo music, though apparently not so happy in varieties of spontaneous melody as Cesti's, aims equally at definiteness of structure. His work in the line of oratorio is especially significant, as he stands comparatively alone in cultivating all the natural resources of that form of art--on the lines which Handel adopted later--at a time when his fellow composers were falling in with the inclination of their public for solo singing, and were giving up the grand opportunities of choral effect as superfluous."