Greek and Roman style and culture was the NEXT BIG THING. And not just the styles, but the forms and features as well. So, some folk got into Greek drama again in a big way - the intellectuals, mainly. Only now, because this time around they had more than rocks and drums for accompaniment, the music became a much more important part. The writing had always been there. But the music? Well, the music relied, as it always did, on the technology of the day - the instruments, which had been somewhat primitive when the Greeks tried it first time around. The new versions of Greek dramas saw much more emphasis on the music - 'drammaper musica\ plays through music, as they were called, and they would become big hits. Where, first time round, you had dramas, this time round you had something completely different. In fact, it would only take someone, in the right place, at the right time to think… 'Hang on a minute…this could be big' and PING! You've got OPERA!
Who would be the first? Who would be the one to write the first ever opera? Who would be the one to go down in the annals of music history alongside the man in the iron mask, the man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo and the man from Delmontehesayyes. Who would be… The Man Who Invented Opera!' Well, whoever it was, was sure to become a household name. The first ever opera. Just think of it. You'd be famous the world over. You'd be feted for years to come. You could write your own cheques. People would name their children after you.
You'd be guaranteed an upgrade to business class, even if you weren't wearing a suit. You'd be remembered throughout all history. So how come it was…Jacopo Peri?
THE FIRST EVER OPERA (BUT ONE)
M
mm. I know what you're thinking. Who he? Ed? Quite, quite.
You see, the world has decided, somewhat dubiously, that the first opera ever written was Monteverdi's UOrfeo, which is only fair in so far as… well, in so far as it wasn't. Monteverdi's L'Orfeo was, in fact, the second opera ever written. Peri's Dafne was the first. So, where did it all go wrong for Peri? Because it's a bit like, well… imagine Neil Armstrong setting foot on the moon, the first man ever to do so, and yet the world decides to remember Buzz Aldrin as the hero. So, where did it all go wrong for Peri?
Well, it seems that giddy fortune's furious fickle wheel is really the culprit, here. True, Monteverdi, it seems, was probably by far the more skilful of the two composers, with an oeuvre richer in harmonic invention and melody. Peri was more or less his contemporary, born in Rome and one of the great musicians of his day, as well as friend of the Medicis. He was also one of the in-crowd, as it were, and, as such, probably there at the sharp end when dmmma per musica came back in. Indeed, he almost certainly had a hand in reviving it, alongside some of his fellow writers. Where fortune seems to have favoured Monteverdi, though, is in the simple but crucial matter of survival. The score of Monteverdi's UOrfeo survived; the score of Peri's Dafne didn't. To add further insult to injury, Peri's second opera, Eurydice, was written some seven years before the first performance of Monteverdi's UOrfeo, and is, technically speaking - with full surviving score, etc - the first opera in existence. And yet, despite all that, the ground-breaking nature of Monteverdi's opera still leads many to describe it today as the first 'real' opera ever written. I don't know, what is a man to do? It reminds me of the story of Edison and his telephone and the dodgy dealings which led to the failure of rival designs. Still. What's done is done: Monteverdi is remembered some 450 years after his birth, while Peri is no more than a piece of trivia in the classical music section of a pub quiz. Isn't life a bastard?
IF IT'S NOT BAROQUE…
ow, sorry to make this book nigh on interactive, but would you just help me a moment. Close your eyes, again, and imagine if you will a huge 1950s post-war British factory. Are you there?
Bugger. Actually you can't read this if you close your eyes, can you? OK, open them again, and I'll do the imagining.
I'm seeing a aircraft hangar-sized factory in the fifties. Lots of people are working - only not on anything vaguely mechanical. They are writing… with quill pens and parchment manuscript. Suddenly, a huge, almost air-raid-siren-like hooter goes off, and, immediately, many of them down quills. Then a voice booms over the loudspeaker: 'Ladies and gentlemen, it is now 1600. It is now 1600. The Renaissance shift is now at an end. Will composers please remember to take all their belongings with them when leaving, so that the baroque shift can get to work immediately, and we won't have any complaints. I repeat, the Renaissance shift is now finished. Anyone who's working a double shift and staying on for baroque is entitled to five minutes to stretch their legs. Thank you.' BING BONG.
OK, OK, so it never happened like that, I know. Why do you think I did it? It just shows, in a way, how useless these labels are… Renaissance, baroque, etc. People just… composed. True, music evolved over time, but not in one year. So maybe that's why many scholars have even had difficulty in agreeing where one period ends and another one begins. Most plump for baroque as starting around 1600, but then this becomes meaningless when you see that composers such as Dowland, Gibbons and Monteverdi - all of them hardly contenders for the tide 'Mr Baroque of Morecambe Bay, 2004' - were working long into the seventeenth century. Still, as politicians are wont to say, where do you draw the line? Well, here, as it happens, so I guess we've got to lump it.
Now, let me take you by the hand and lead you through the streets of the early seventeenth century - I'll show you something that'll make you change your pants.
1607. Good year? Bad year? Well, bad year if you were Guy Fawkes, I suppose. Bad in that you were dead, I mean, your head satayed with peanut sauce just a year earlier, after you'd been caught in the House of Lords, walking backwards with a carelessly leaking keg of gunpowder. 1607 means the new play from everybody's favourite bard, William Shakespeare, namely Antony and Cleopatra. It means the new gadget from Galileo, a compass, so now you could see your way through the stench and fog of south London to go and see Mr Shakespeare's play. And what else have we got? Let's see… Oh yes, we've got opera, as I said earlier. Opera. What more could you want?
Well, opera singers, I suppose: we haven't got them yet. Well, that's not fair, actually. We have got opera singers, we just haven't got women opera singers. Not yet, anyway. It's still all blokes. Ever since St Paul, no less, said that women should stay silent in church, they've become as rare as a witch at a diocesan coffee morning. So, if we don't have women, who is going to sing the high bits? Who is going to hit the top Cs? Well, looks like someone will be going to the ball, after all. If you get my drift. Well, OK, someone is going to the ball, but it turns out it's going to be your personal surgeon - now remove your trousers, please! Yes, along with opera came the meanest men in all Italy - and you can't deny they've got good reason to be - THE CASTRATOS. Mmm, could be a great series on Channel 4, produced by HBO.
I would seriously have loved to hear a good castrato, just to see how different they were from today's counter tenors. The idea, most common in Italy, it's got to be said, was to castrate a boy soprano, thus preserving the boy's voice, and combining it with the chest, lungs and therefore range of an adult. One of the most famous castrati who ever lived was a man called Farinelli (1705-82) who, it is said, was employed by Philip V of Spain to sing him the same four songs every evening. Check out the film about him - very good.
GOODBYE, LOVE. HELLO, LUVVIES!
Y
es, OK, I know. It's not my fault. Don't blame me. Yes, we have opera. It's a big fat hit with virtually everyone who goes to see it. And you can see why - it was so starkly different to anything that had come before it. As beautiful as a four-part Mass is, especially when delivered in the glorious settings of a visually stunning cathedral, just think how ALIVE an opera must have seemed in comparison. It must have been a bit like when Special FX first started to take off in films. Audiences had, literally, seen nothing like it before. Well, opera must have been like that - different from anything they'd ever seen before.