The Birth of Opera

The Birth of Opera deals with the predecessors and early specimens of opera from Poliziano's Orfeo (c. 1480) to Monteverdi's Arianna (1608). It pays considerable attention to the role played by such poets as Poliziano, Tasso, Guarini, Rinuccini, and Chiabrera and the conventions that graduallydeveloped for shaping the dramatic plot with regard to operatic structure, in particular the problem of the finale, which required a happy ending, and the inevitable foil preceding it, the expressive solo singing of a lament. The accent is on the early operas of Peri and Monteverdi and theirpredecessors, the intermedi, but frequent references to later operas by Mozart, Verdi, Stravinsky, Cavalli, and Gluck relate the origins of the genre to its essence through the centuries. In particular, the enduring fascination with the Orpheus myth, from ancient Greece to Haydn and Stravinsky, isexplored in greater detail than in most histories of early opera.The Birth of Opera is the most comprehensive, up-to-date study of early opera available, and includes a full bibliography.