Hasse and Porpora, then, were the leaders of those who remained true to the stereotyped form of opera, the singers’ opera, whose very nature precluded progress. They and a host of minor men, like Francesco Feo, Leonardo Vinci, Pasquale Cafaro, were enrolled in a party which resisted all ideas of reform; and their natural allies in upholding absurd conventions were the singers, that all-powerful race of virtuosi, the impresarios, and all the great tribe of adherents who derived a lucrative income from the system. Against these formidable forces the under-current of reform--both musical and dramatic--felt from the beginning of the century, could make little head. The protests of men like Benedetto Marcello, whose satire _Il teatro alla moda_ appeared in 1722, were voices crying in the wilderness. Yet reform was inevitable, a movement no less momentous than when the Florentine reform of 1600 was under way--the great process of crystallization and refinement which was to usher in that most glorious era of musical creation known as the classic period. Like the earlier reform, it signified a reaction against technique, against soulless display of virtuosity, a tendency toward simplicity, subjectivity, directness of expression--a return to nature. Though much of the pioneer work was done by composers of instrumental music whose discussion must be deferred to the next chapter, the movement had its most spectacular manifestations in connection with opera, and in that aspect is summed up in the work of Gluck, the outstanding personality in the second half of the eighteenth century. In the domain of absolute music it saw its beginnings in the more or less spontaneous efforts of instrumentalists like Fasch, Foerster, Benda, and Johann Stamitz. First among those whose initiative was felt in _both_ directions we must name Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, the young Neapolitan who, born in 1710, had his brilliant artistic career cut short at the premature age of twenty-six. II