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It appeared in his "Daphne," a "Dramma per la Musica," written to text by the poet Rinuccini and privately performed at the Palazzo Corsi, in 1597. This was actually the first opera, although the term was not applied to such compositions until half a century later.
'By her Majesty's Company of Comedians. At the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane, on Tuesday next, being the 14th Day of August, will be presented, A comedy call'd the Lancashire Witches, Written by the Ingenious Mr. Shadwell, late Poet Laureat. Carefully Revis'd. With all the Original Decorations of Scenes, Witche's Songs and Dances, proper to the Dramma. The Principal Parts to be perform'd by Mr.
But we are concerned now only with the play as Da Ponte and Mozart gave it to us. In the dramatic terminology of the eighteenth century "Don Giovanni" was a dramma giocoso; in the better sense of the phrase, a playful drama a lyric comedy.
In its stead the musical forms practised by composers of secular music and adopted by musicians of such small education as hardly to be worthy of the title of composers, makers of carnival songs and frottole, predominated and determined the musical character not only of the Sacre Rappresentazioni, but also of the secular lyric plays which succeeded them and which continued to exist in Italy even after the "stile rappresentativo" had been introduced in the primitive dramma per musica of Caccini and Peri.
She is schoolmistress, and has a mortal dread of being wrong. 'Si, she cries, wavering, appealing, 'una dramma inglese. 'English! I repeated. 'Yes, an English drama. 'How do you write it? Anxiously, she gets a pencil from her reticule, and, with black-gloved scrupulousness, writes Amleto. 'Hamlet! I exclaim wonderingly.
"Mama'll come," said the judge, warningly, and, sure enough, out came a lady, with the loveliest face, and a white lace cap on her grey hair. "Come, dears," she said, in a voice we know well and both flew to her, for who was dearer to their loving hearts than "Dramma?"
And it is the most suitable to the All-comprehensive Wisdom of God for us to conceive, that without having this knowledge, we may be far less able to judge of the Divine oeconomy, in reference to his Dealings with us here, than he who should see but one Scene of a Dramma, would thereby be capacitated to judge of the Plot or Design of the whole.
When the young people were finally carried off to bed, every one went along, for the gentlemen were all down town, and what better could the mothers and aunties do than follow the procession headed by "Dramma," and watch the roguish imps get into their snowy little nests?
Tredici volte si recito il dramma, e sempre segui l'effetto stesso universalmente: di che era segno palpabile il sommo previo silenzio, con cui l'uditorio tutto si apparechiava a goderne l'effetto." The line of recitative has unfortunately not been preserved; nor is it known what the opera, or whose the music, which produced an effect which may not be inaptly described in the words of Byron:
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