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We are told that despite the fine professions of the Florentines, Mme. Archilei was permitted to embroider Peri's Euridice in something like this fashion. But we must admit that even in those days a prima donna had power, and that something had to be conceded to popular taste. Furthermore, we shall see that the Florentines did not purpose to abolish floridity entirely.
Indeed, the members of the young Florentine coterie were generally concerned in this fête and doubtless found much to move them toward their new conception. The Count of Vernio's comedy "Amico Fido" was played and was accompanied by six spectacular intermezzi with music. The first of these was by Ottavio Rinuccini, author of "Dafne" and "Euridice," usually called the first operas.
So Lies death embracing death!" In the midst of this description, by a fine stroke of art, Euridice, the mother of Haemon, abruptly and silently quits the stage . When next we hear of her, she has destroyed herself, with her last breath cursing her husband as the murderer of her child. The end of the play leaves Creon the surviver.
"There lived in the East a gilded knight, named Orpheus, who was possessed of immense wealth, and had everything that heart can wish. He had taken to wife his own sister, Euridice, who did not, however, bear him any children.
It was not strange that in such a time Italian poets should have discerned in Orpheus the embodiment of their own ideals. Of its relation to the Sun myth and of Euridice as the dawn they give no hint. To them Orpheus was the embodiment of the Arcadian idea. He was the singer of the hymns that woke all nature to life.
Porgimi, Amor, porgimi or le tue ale. While Aristeo is following Euridice, Orfeo enters upon the scene with a Latin ode in Sapphic metre in honour of Cardinal Gonzaga.
In a moment she sinks back lifeless, and he pours forth his despair in the immortal strains of 'Che farò senza Euridice. Eros then appears, and tells him that the gods have had pity upon his sorrow. He transports him to the Temple of Love, where Eurydice, restored to life, is awaiting him, and the opera ends with conventional rejoicings.
She gave the stag to the bridal pair and told a pretty story about his being the one into which she had changed the incautious Acteon. After Diana had retired the orchestra became silent and the tones of a lyre were heard. Then entered Orpheus who began his tale with the words, "I bewailed on the spires of the Apennines the untimely death of my Euridice."
But it is best to regard these privately performed works merely as experiments, and to date the actual foundation of opera from the year 1600, when a public performance of Peri's 'Euridice' was given at Florence in honour of the marriage of Maria de' Medici and Henry IV. of France.
J'ai trouve mon Euridice, Rien n'egale mon bonheur without the music being affected in any way. This being so, he continues, music can never unite with words to express any notion at all, and the only form artistically admissible is absolute or instrumental music.
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