It is impossible to trace back to the earliest times the addition of music to a stage play; from the constant references to the use of the art made by the Greek poets, we know that it was a handmaid to the drama from very early times. In the Middle Ages, too, there is plenty of evidence to show that, at certain stated intervals in the course of the drama, music was introduced; but such music as this was always written in the church style of the period, and had no significance of its own. It was the annoying and incongruous presentation of polyphonic music (written in strict contrapuntal style, and in the church manner) with the performance of dramas, in which such music was utterly out of place, that led the band of amateurs mentioned above to search for a more suitable means of clothing the dramatic ideas and stage situations. [Sidenote: =The Bardi Enthusiasts (1585, about)=] [Sidenote: =What they Achieved=] This band of dilletanti is generally known by the name of the “Palazzo Bardi” coterie, from the fact that their chief representative was a certain Count Bardi, and that their meetings were usually held at his palace in Florence. This city was, at the period of which we write (the last part of the sixteenth century), highly interested in the masterpieces of literary antiquity, more especially in the magnificent dramas of the older Greek poets. Although the Florentines knew that these tragedies had some form of musical accompaniment, they were quite in the dark as to what that music was; they felt, however, that the one and only prevalent kind of music of their day—_i.e._, sacred music, was by no means adequate for the expression of the ideas to be represented. The Bardi amateurs therefore turned the steps of their native musicians towards other paths, and induced them to write music of a kind which they believed to be dramatically fit and suitable. That this music was a failure does not matter in the least, for although it was unable to give any genuine idea of what these enthusiasts sought—namely, a reproduction of Greek tragedy consistent with its original form—it invented a new medium and method of expression, of which composers soon availed themselves in setting to music the dramatic productions of the day. The first of these early composers to achieve success in this field was Peri, who produced in 1594 (or 1597) _Daphne_, and a few years later, in 1600, _Euridice_. _Daphne_ was semi-privately performed, but _Euridice_ was put before the world, and achieved such success that its method and style of composition were soon taken as models for stage music. Hence the date 1600 is assigned as that of the birth of real opera; the same year seeing the production of the first real oratorio, as we now understand the term. We quote the whole of the short prologue to the earliest known opera: Prologue to “Euridice” [Music: Prologue to “Euridice.” (Peri, A.D. 1600.) LA TRAGEDIA.]