Coloratura singing was thus the foundation of the new art of vocal solo performance. Musical historians generally attach more importance in this connection to the invention of dramatic recitative. This is due in great measure to the fact that the records deal much more fully with the latter subject, and also to the adoption of declamatory recitative as the basis of the art form of opera.[6] Solo singing owed its sudden and unprecedented bound into popularity to the delight which people took in vocal ornamentation. Even the opera itself was indebted for its rapid advance to the public demand for coloratura singing. Indeed it seems hardly too much to say that coloratura singing was the first type of art music to find its way to the affections of the general public. Up to about 1600, artistic music, despite its rapid development in the hundred years preceding, had been the possession only of the cultured and wealthy classes. But with the opening of the opera houses the new art form was brought within the reach of the great body of the people. That the public responded so enthusiastically to the new form of entertainment thus offered them was due in great measure to the delight people took in coloratura singing. Composers soon found that in order to please the public they must provide ornamental solos for the singers. This was of course opposed to the views of the little group of Florentine gentlemen who projected the first performances of opera; they considered musical declamation to be sufficient for all the purposes of a truly dramatic art. But the public thought otherwise and demanded to hear the singers in solos which displayed the full beauties of their voices. Monteverdi’s _Orfeo_, produced in 1607, contains a number of elaborate coloratura songs. A striking fact regarding the system of vocal instruction in vogue during the later decades of the sixteenth century is that it sufficed for the training of the first solo singers. Artists whose education had not been designed to fit them for the performance of solo music were yet able to take up this music and to sing it satisfactorily after they had left their teachers. Even though it was intended only for the performance of choral works, the system of vocal training then in vogue enabled singers to master the new art of solo singing for themselves. The advance of solo singing did not lead to the abandonment of the traditional course of instruction. On the contrary, the same system continued to be applied, extended only to meet the new requirements imposed on it by the great elaboration of vocal technique. By 1650 coloratura singing was firmly established as the favorite branch of music, and for more than 200 years following it was one of the chief glories of the art.