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Updated: May 20, 2025
Any statements as to Irish influence in Shakespeare that go beyond this belong to the realm of conjecture. Professor Kittredge has attempted to show that in Syr Orfeo, upon which the poet drew for portions of the plot of A Midsummer Night's Dream, the Irish story of Etain and Mider was fused with the medieval form of the classical tale of Orpheus and Eurydice.
This, however, is not essential to an appreciation of the precise nature of the step from the sacred representation to the lyric drama and its importance in laying the foundations of opera. This momentous step was taken late in the fifteenth century with the performance of Angelo Poliziano's "Favola di Orfeo" at the Court of Mantua to celebrate the return of the Cardinal Gonzaga.
The brilliant success of Orfeo e Euridice, in 1647, determined the national taste in favour of this sort of spectacle, and gave birth to the wish of transplanting it to the French stage. It was in 1659 that the first opera, with music adapted to a French poem, was performed at Issy.
He went as often as he could to hear the works both of Grétri and Gluck, and Orfeo delighted him, while the Fausse magie of the former moved him to say to the composer, "Your music stirs sweet sensations to which I thought my heart had long been closed." This being so, and life being as brief as art is long, we need not further examine the controversy.
Let's have 'Orfeo." Round about him now were fields of gold and silver flowers, white forms swaying in the sunlight, bright birds flying to and fro. All was summer. Lingering waves of sweetness and regret flooded his soul. Some cigar ash dropped, and taking out a silk handkerchief to brush it off, he inhaled a mingled scent as of snuff and eau de Cologne.
And you are pretty, but not old enough to be Orfeo yet. I must wait I must wait, though I wait till I doubt if I am not changed to Proserpine with her cracked voice. Boy, if I kissed you " She advanced a step, but the negress caught her by the wrist violently, at the same moment waving me off.
But the Italian madrigal had not been well developed at the time of the production of Poliziano's "Orfeo," while the frottola was the most popular song of the people. The frottola was a secular song, written in polyphonic style. The polyphony was simple and the aim of the composition was popularity.
But love of luxurious display slowly transformed their pastorals into glittering spectacles. As for the music, we may be certain that in the beginning it followed the lines laid down in the "Orfeo."
But now it was not near nine, and Caterina must sit down to the harpsichord and sing Sir Christopher's favourite airs from Gluck's 'Orfeo', an opera which, for the happiness of that generation, was then to be heard on the London stage.
Yet if we permit ourselves to believe that the lyric solo made but a single spasmodic appearance in the "Orfeo" and had to be born again in the artistic conversion brought about by the labors of Galilei and Caccini, we shall be deceived.
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