Page 65 - (DK) The Classical Music Book - Big Ideas Simply Explained

BAROQUE 1600–1750 63

See also: Le bourgeois gentilhomme 70–71 ■ Dido and Aeneas 72–77 ■
Orfeo ed Euridice 118–119 ■ The Magic Flute 134–137 ■ The Barber of Seville 148

their humanist debates discussions
about the nature of Greek drama,
which they concluded was sung
throughout. Peri wrote La Dafne
(1598) with composer Jacopo Corsi
and poet Ottavio Rinuccini in an Singing his works
attempt to revive this practice. composed with the
greatest artifice … moved
Elements of opera and disposed every stony
While only fragments of La Dafne heart to tears.
exist today, Peri’s second work, Severo Bonini Jacopo Peri
Euridice, survives intact. The
libretto of Euridice tells the Greek Born into a noble family in
myth of Orpheus, who enters the 1561, Jacopo Peri grew up
Underworld to retrieve his wife in Florence. As a teenager,
Eurydice after her death from he played the organ and
snakebite. Euridice offers the sang at various churches
standard intermedio combination instruments may also have been and monasteries in the city
of songs alternating with choruses used. The performance included before beginning a lifelong
and instrumental passages, but sections composed by Peri’s rival association with the Medici
these are linked by recitatives— at court, Giulio Caccini, who had court as singer, accompanist,
the new style of sung speech. In his trained several of the singers. and composer. In 1598, he
preface to the work, Peri described Caccini even made his own produced La Dafne, followed
his intention of “imitating speech musical setting of the libretto two years later by Euridice
for the wedding festivities of
with song,” which was the bedrock and had it printed prior to Peri’s. Maria de’ Medici and Henry IV
of the new genre. He also listed The publication of these scores of France. Peri also composed
some of the instruments played ensured the opera’s survival. for the musically distinguished
in the original production, such as Mantuan court.
harpsichord, chitarrone (bass lute), In Peri’s footsteps Peri often collaborated
violin, lyre, and lute, although other The new form represented by with other composers, such as
Euridice was repeated in Florence the brothers Giovanni Battista
and emulated elsewhere. In Mantua da Gagliano and Marco da
in 1607, Claudio Monteverdi, master Gagliano. While only a small
of music at the city’s ducal court, handful of these works survive
produced L’Orfeo, which is regarded as testament to Peri’s talent,
as the first operatic masterpiece. they nonetheless laid down
It creates a coherent world, Monteverdi later composed three the template that later opera
highly charged with a further works for the Venetian composers would follow.
distinctive atmosphere. opera houses—Il ritorno d’Ulisse Peri died in Florence in
It is simple without being in patria, L’incoronazione di Poppea, 1633. His gravestone in the
vapid, and dignified without and one now lost—exemplifying Florentine church of Santa
Maria Novella describes
being portentous. the new style. Soon Monteverdi’s him as the inventor of opera.
Stephen Oliver followers, such as Francesco Cavalli
and Antonio Cesti, were producing Other key works
operas in Italy and abroad, with
the basic construction blocks of 1598 La Dafne
recitatives and arias holding the 1609 Le varie musiche
structure together. ■

US_062-063_Eurydice_Jacopo_Peri.indd 63 26/03/18 1:00 PM