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The first Italian to write anything of this kind in a play seems to have been Cavaliere, but unfortunately his "Il Satiro" and "La Disperazione di Sileno" are known to us only through a comment of Doni, who censures them for pedantic affectations and artificialities of style, inimical to the truth of dramatic music.

"Poor Macarroni!" said Caesar, "his high tenor heart must be broken to bits." "He is going," put in Mlle. Cadet. "What a shame!" Sileno vanished and the pianist began to play waltzes. Carminatti was the first on the floor with his partner, who was the Marchesa Sciacca. The Maltese lady danced with an abandon and a feline languor that imposed respect.

This kind of solo was considerably older than Sileno and the performance of Baccio Ugolino in Poliziano's "Orfeo" was unquestionably of the same type. And this manner of delivering a solo, which Castiglione called "recitar alla lira," was a descendant of the art of singing with lute accompaniment which was well known in the fourteenth century.

And the good gentleman would spread his arms, and close them, and look as if he wanted to embrace the whole of humanity to his abdomen, covered with a white waistcoat. "Who can that gentleman be?" Mlle. Cadet asked various times. "That? That is Signor Sileno Macarroni," said Caesar, "Commander of the Order of the Mighty Belly, Knight of the Round Buttocks, and of other distinguished Orders."

All these musicians were composers of madrigals, and Corteccia was at the time Cosimo's chapel master. In this spectacle was heard the solo madrigal for Sileno already mentioned. Here is the opening of this piece; the upper voice was sung and the other voice parts were played as an accompaniment.

"He is a singer," said the Countess Brenda to Mlle. de Sandoval in a low tone. "He is a singer," repeated Mlle. de Sandoval to her governess in a similar tone. "Sileno Macarroni is a singer," said Mlle. Cadet, with equal mysteriousness, addressing Caesar. "But is our friend Macarroni going to sung?" asked Caesar.

We read frequently that the first instance of solo singing was the delivery of a madrigal of Corteccia in a play of 1539. The character Sileno sang the upper part and accompanied himself on the violone, while the lower parts were given to other instruments. But this was nothing new.