I.

Music, as speaking the language of feeling, emotion, and passion, found
its first full expansion in the operatic form. There had been attempts
to represent drama with chorus, founded on the ancient Greek drama, but
it was soon discovered that dialogue and monologue could not be embodied
in choral forms without involving an utter absurdity. The spirit of
the renaissance had freed poetry, statuary, and painting, from the
monopolizing elaims of the church. Music, which had become a well
equipped and developed science, could not long rest in a similar
servitude. Though it is not the aim of the author to discuss operatic
history, a brief survey of the progress of opera from its birth cannot
be omitted.

The oldest of the entertainments which ripened into Italian opera
belongs to the last years of the fifteenth century, and was the work
of the brilliant Politian, known as one of the revivalists of Greek
learning attached to the court of Cosmo de' Medici and his son Lorenzo.
This was the musical drama of "Orfeo." The story was written in Latin,
and sung in music principally choral, though a few solo phrases were
given to the principal characters. It was performed at Rome with great
magnificence, and Vasari tells us that Peruzzi, the decorator of the
papal theatre, painted such scenery for it that even the great Titian
was so struck with the _vraisemblance_ of the work that he was not
satisfied until he had touched the canvas to be sure of its not being in
relief. We may fancy indeed that the scenery was one great attraction
of the representation. In spite of spasmodic encouragement by the more
liberally minded pontiffs, the general weight of church influence was