# What was the first Opera?



## Clouds Weep Snowflakes (Feb 24, 2019)

No, really; when and where did Operatic composition/vocals start? I mostly noticed it starting in the Classical period, Mozart composed quite a few; what about Bach?


----------



## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

Monteverdi is generally credited with the first real opera, L'Orfeo, from 1609.


----------



## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

Clouds Weep Snowflakes said:


> what about Bach?


Zero. Handel composed quite a lot though.


----------



## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

mbhaub said:


> Monteverdi is generally credited with the first real opera, L'Orfeo, from 1609.


Wiki: The first Baroque opera ever written was performed in 1597 in Florence in Italy. It was called Dafne and the composer was Jacopo Peri. This opera is now lost.


----------



## The Conte (May 31, 2015)

Isn't the oldest opera of which we still have the music Euridice by Peri?

N.


----------



## Clouds Weep Snowflakes (Feb 24, 2019)

Art Rock said:


> Wiki: The first Baroque opera ever written was performed in 1597 in Florence in Italy. It was called Dafne and the composer was Jacopo Peri. This opera is now lost.


Italy? Not surprising...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L'Orfeo
So this is the first Opera still fully intact today? Was it printed on CD(s)?


----------



## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

Clouds Weep Snowflakes said:


> Italy? Not surprising...
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L'Orfeo
> So this is the first Opera still fully intact today? Was it printed on CD(s)?


There are quite a few recordings of Monteverdi's *Orfeo*. It's hardly a rarity, though it exists in different versions.


----------



## marceliotstein (Feb 23, 2019)

Indeed Dafne by Jacopo Peri was the first opera, though what makes this fact really interesting is that the Florentines who launched this new form were not trying to create something new. They were trying to recreate the experience of classical Athenian drama, and unwittingly created something new instead.


----------



## Meyerbeer Smith (Mar 25, 2016)

The Conte said:


> Isn't the oldest opera of which we still have the music Euridice by Peri?
> 
> N.


Yes. Performed at the Palazzo Pitti, Florence, 6 October 1600.

Peri and his librettist, poet Ottavio Rinuccini, were members of the Florentine Camerata, a humanist group who wanted to go back to the Greeks (a cry that would be taken up by Gluck and Wagner).

The camerata believed that Greek tragedy had achieved a perfect blend of words and music; they would resurrect that form.

Their aim was "to copy the drama of the Greeks by setting musical notes to poetry in such a way as both to express the meaning of the words and to preserve their metre and accent accurately" (H.C. Colley, _The Growth of Music_, 1912).

The text was the important thing, "to be sung with the correct and natural declamation of words" (John Warrack & Ewan West, _The Oxford Dictionary of Opera_, 1992).

Because the words must be heard clearly, the camerata adopted the stile rappresentativo, or expressive monody: one solo singer with the simplest possible accompaniment (usually a harpsichord).

The camerata also avoided polyphonic writing (several lines of music once), and picturesque madrigalian flourishes: music had to interpret the feeling of the whole passage. They may be beautiful, but they made the text hard to hear.

"There was a distinct difference between their object and that of the mediaeval songs which often kept close to the feeling and metre of the words," Colley continues, "because the first object of these songs was always to make a beautiful tune, whereas the Florentine experimenters did not want to write tunes at all, but only to express the words in musical notes rising and falling as the voice of a reciter would rise and fall."

"And so they eventually established the kind of singing which we now call recitative, because it reproduces the expression of a reciting voice and has no definite rhythm or tune apart from the words."

_Euridice_, then, is nearly two hours of arrhythmic, tuneless recitative, accompanied by a harpsichord. It's quite pleasant arrhythmic, tuneless recitative, accompanied by a harpsichord. But it's monodonous (so to speak).

The first works performed in the stile rappresentativo were intermedios and cantatas (Vincenzo Galileo's _Il conte Ugolino_, 1582). The Camerata achieved its goal of music drama (or favola) in 1597-98, when Peri's _Dafne _(composed 1594) was performed at Jacopo Corsi's palace.

_Euridice _was written for the wedding of Henri IV of France to Maria de' Medici, at the Pitti Palace. Peri himself sang the role of Orfeo.

That first audience didn't warm to the work; even for the 16th century, it was thought dull. One eyewitness account ignored it altogether; others found the recitative "like the chanting of the Passion"; and Camerata founder Giovanni de' Bardi thought that Peri and Rinuccini "should not have gone into tragic texts and objectionable subjects" (Tim Carter, "The 17th Century", _Oxford History of Opera_).

_Euridice _was, however, "soon recognised as a work of considerable emotional force and originality, and had a notable effect on the early history of opera," Warrack & West write.

More Orpheus and Eurydice operas followed. Giulio Caccini's _Euridice _was performed in Florence in 1602. Some of Caccini's music had been performed at the wedding, and he had underhandedly tried to sabotage Peri's work and claim credit for the first opera by having his score published first. (His daughter Francesca was the first woman to compose an opera: _La liberazione di Ruggiero dall'isola d'Alcina_, 1625.)

And Monteverdi's _Favola d'Orfeo _appeared in Mantua in 1607 - the first opera to be anywhere near the repertoire.

Peri was their model; "by turning theory into practice," Warrack & West argue, "he demonstrated the full potential of the new art-form.

"With its effective handling of the stile rappresentativo, finely judged use of the chorus, and illuminating treatment of the mythological story, its impression is still as powerful in modern revivals as it must have been to the audience of the day."


----------



## Tikoo Tuba (Oct 15, 2018)

Music notation goes back to 1400 BC .


----------



## Meyerbeer Smith (Mar 25, 2016)

Tikoo Tuba said:


> Music notation goes back to 1400 BC .


And if we think of Greek tragedy as opera or music drama:


----------



## Tikoo Tuba (Oct 15, 2018)

If I think my own singing can make two voices ...


----------

