The first opera on a profane, or rather on a secular subject--for it is surely a mistake to regard everything not sacred as necessarily profane--was the descent of Orpheus into the infernal regions, drawn thither, as is well known, by his wife, Eurydice. The subject of Orpheus, alike lyrical and dramatic, has been a favourite one with composers for the last four hundred years, from Poliziano, who produced his _Orfeo_ at Rome in 1440, up to Gluck, nearly three centuries later, and from Gluck down to Offenbach, who delights a good many persons in the present day. The _Orfeo_, which was brought out just four centuries ago, at Rome, bore no more resemblance, in a musical point of view, to a modern opera, than did the sacred musical plays before spoken of; and up to the year 1600 we meet with no musical work which bears more than a fundamental or general sort of resemblance to the modern opera. But almost immediately after the production of the second _Eurydice_ a great reformer appeared. Monteverde, the innovator in question, changed, or at least gave new development to, the harmonic system of his predecessors, assigned far greater importance in his operas to accompaniments, and increased greatly both the number and the variety of the instruments in the orchestra, which, under his arrangement, included every kind of instrument known at the time. Monteverde employed a separate combination of instruments to announce the entry and return of each personage in his operas; a dramatic means made use of long afterwards by Hoffmann--better known by his fantastic tales than by his musical works--in his opera of _Undine_; and which cannot but suggest a similar device employed with more system and with greater elaboration by Wagner. Monteverde, like so many of his predecessors and followers, felt attracted by the story of Orpheus and Eurydice, and his first work was on the subject of _Orfeo_, which was produced in 1608 at the Court of Mantua; ordered, it may be, by that gallant but dissolute Duke of Mantua whom Signor Mario used to impersonate so admirably in _Rigoletto_. Monteverde's _Orfeo_ contained parts for harpsichords, lyres, violas, double basses, a double harp with two rows of strings, two violins, besides guitars, organs, a flute, clarions, and even trombones. It is interesting to know that, apart from the instrumental combinations which announced the entry and return of each character, the bass-violas accompanied Orpheus; the violas, Eurydice; the trombones, Pluto; the organs, Apollo; while Charon--a most unsentimental personage, one would think--sang to the accompaniment of that sentimental instrument, the guitar.