Arrive at Opera as we know it today: Peri’s and Monteverdi’s operas Since the early twentieth century, European musical style has significantly changed its tradition for music as having take place around 1600.[footnoteRef:1] In general, it is described as the transition from Renaissance to Baroque style. Opera as an art originated from Italy in the 16th century and it spread out to Europe. This work is associated with drama, dance, vocal and visual music with impressive effects of the Greek and Romans. Orpheus was the greatest of musicians in ancient Greek mythology, it is challenging the gods with his capability to sing and play. Euridice by Peri and Orfeo by Monteverid are well-known works of early opera, which made use of Orpheus’ story and the same libretto. Peri’s Euridice is first survived and credited with early advances in opera composition as recitative and advancing Florentine Camerata’s ideas of Greek drama. On other hand, Monteverdi’s Orfeo Baroque operatic works include a variety of genres and types of styles. The text and plots are drawn from classical antiquity or ancient history, and the action involves a variety of special scenic effects.[footnoteRef:2] Because both works used the same libretto, in examining the two is very informative between two operas. Monteverdi’s opera is more widely known and performed today because it has a greater variety of musical style and richer sounds in instrumental and chorus. The purpose of this essay is to discuss the operas of Peri and Monteverdi’s libretto in various adaptations. This essay will cover an examination of monadic style works, instrumentations, and choral music. Ultimately, it will be shown that the conceptual and composers goals of Jacopo Peri and Claudio Monteverdi are in setting text to music. These ideas and changes effectively influenced the gradual growth of opera with the invention and improvement of today’s opera. [1: David Schulenberg, Music of the Baroque. New York; Oxford; Oxford University Press, 2014, 35.] [2: Schulenberg, 59.] Before we examine Peri’s Euridice and Monteverdi’s Orfeo, it is necessary to acknowledge the experiments of Florentine Camerata. Florentine Camerata was an important group who met to discuss societies or academies and they were leading to write an ancient Greek and music. Florentine Camerata involved in Vincenzo Galilei and Giulo Caccini, but also Jacopo Peri, Ottavio Rinuccini, and Girolamo Mei participated. Florentine Camerata started with the experiment of stile recitative,which was a Greek style between speech and songs that was eventually called opera. Rinuccini’s poems were a favorite subject for operas because the mythical hero is himself a singer and the combination of a simple action with a diversity of expressive situations.[footnoteRef:3] Peri was the monadic of the Florentine composers who wrote Eurydice, which is the earliest surviving opera with a completed setting of Rinuccini’s poem. It premiered on October 6, 1600 at ...

1. Arrive at Opera as we know it today: Peri’s and Monteverdi’s
operas
Since the early twentieth century, European musical style has
significantly changed its tradition for music as having take
place around 1600.[footnoteRef:1] In general, it is described as
the transition from Renaissance to Baroque style. Opera as an
art originated from Italy in the 16th century and it spread out to
Europe. This work is associated with drama, dance, vocal and
visual music with impressive effects of the Greek and Romans.
Orpheus was the greatest of musicians in ancient Greek
mythology, it is challenging the gods with his capability to sing
and play. Euridice by Peri and Orfeo by Monteverid are well-
known works of early opera, which made use of Orpheus’ story
and the same libretto. Peri’s Euridice is first survived and
credited with early advances in opera composition as recitative
and advancing Florentine Camerata’s ideas of Greek drama. On
other hand, Monteverdi’s Orfeo Baroque operatic works include
a variety of genres and types of styles. The text and plots are
drawn from classical antiquity or ancient history, and the action
involves a variety of special scenic effects.[footnoteRef:2]
Because both works used the same libretto, in examining the
two is very informative between two operas. Monteverdi’s opera
is more widely known and performed today because it has a
greater variety of musical style and richer sounds in
instrumental and chorus. The purpose of this essay is to discuss
the operas of Peri and Monteverdi’s libretto in various
adaptations. This essay will cover an examination of monadic
style works, instrumentations, and choral music. Ultimately, it
will be shown that the conceptual and composers goals of
Jacopo Peri and Claudio Monteverdi are in setting text to music.
These ideas and changes effectively influenced the gradual
growth of opera with the invention and improvement of today’s
opera. [1: David Schulenberg, Music of the Baroque. New

2. York; Oxford; Oxford University Press, 2014, 35.] [2:
Schulenberg, 59.]
Before we examine Peri’s Euridice and Monteverdi’s Orfeo, it is
necessary to acknowledge the experiments of Florentine
Camerata. Florentine Camerata was an important group who met
to discuss societies or academies and they were leading to write
an ancient Greek and music. Florentine Camerata involved in
Vincenzo Galilei and Giulo Caccini, but also Jacopo Peri,
Ottavio Rinuccini, and Girolamo Mei participated. Florentine
Camerata started with the experiment of stile recitative,which
was a Greek style between speech and songs that was eventually
called opera.
Rinuccini’s poems were a favorite subject for operas because
the mythical hero is himself a singer and the combination of a
simple action with a diversity of expressive
situations.[footnoteRef:3] Peri was the monadic of the
Florentine composers who wrote Eurydice, which is the earliest
surviving opera with a completed setting of Rinuccini’s poem.
It premiered on October 6, 1600 at the Pitti Palace in Florence
as a wedding celebration of Henri IV and Marie de’ Medic of
France. During the Counter-Reformation, the group of
Florentine Camerata attempted to transfer a direct emotional
impact to the audience. Jacopo Peri was one of the members
who stringently followed a monody style; recitative and aria.
Peri’s new invention, recitative, composing style is a “speech-
like musical declamation.”[footnoteRef:4] Characteristically a
singer sings to the emotional and expressive content of the
words as natural delivery, during “changing harmony both
matches the emotion and underpins the metrical stresses of the
poetry.”[footnoteRef:5] Ex. 1 demonstrates this basic principle
through Pastore’s opening recitative shows. [3: Donald Jay
Grout and Hermine Weigel Williams, A Short Histroy of Opera.
4th ed. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003, 43.] [4:
Mark Ringer, Opera's first master : the musical dramas of
Claudio Monteverdi / Mark Ringer. n.p.: Pompton Plains, N.J. :

3. Amadeus Press, 2006, 24. ] [5: Tim Carter, Monteverdi's
musical theatre / Tim Carter (n.p.: New Haven : Yale University
Press, c2002), 5.]
Ex. 1 Jacopo Peri, Euridice [scene 1]
Shown Ex1, basso continuo prolongs to a chord and the bass
part plays as the melody line moves pitches against between
consonant and dissonant. Consonances progress on all stressed
syllables. It shows that the rhythmic and pitch accents marked
as circles and the harmonic repetitions or changes marked as
triangles, all follow by emphasis on texts. The first syllable of
‘liete’ and ‘tutte’ (not shown in ex. 1) are the highest note (e) in
the passage that is there for emphasis, while the high (d) on
‘ciel’ (heaven) is word painting.[footnoteRef:6] Undoubtedly,
Peri’s monadic style was leading into the making of an opera
with Italian composers for more than a century; including
Monteverdi which was adapted by Peri’s monadic style later for
his Orfeo. Monteverdi used the same mythological story of
Orfeo and Euridice. [6: Carter, 26.]
However, Peri’s declamatory speech is flows with predictability
so that the audiences sought more tunes in the opera. Taking
this into consideration, Monteverdi adopted Peri’s monadic
style but he was determined to write with more power and depth
of expression in his opera. The main difference between their
recitatives is Monteverdi’s speeches in the performing dramatic
dialogue which utilizes unpredictable melodic styles and
spontaneous expression.[footnoteRef:7] This was evidenced in
Monteverdi’s Orfeo wherehe used different instruments to
deliver the continuo part for certain passages or characters. He
uses “a mall organ with wood pipes joins the traditional theorbo
to accompany the messenger and subsequently accompanies
Orfeo’s lament.”[footnoteRef:8] [7: Ringer, 16.] [8:
Schulenberg, 63.]

4. Monteverdi’s variety duets and dances and extended the
instrumental ensemble makes it better reproduce the drama. The
development of instrumentation by Monteverdi’s Orfeo is one of
the most influential contributions to today’s opera. For example
in Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo, when Orfeo found his wife was died,
the music transform from the major to minor mode and the
organ adds in scene to reflect his emotion’s through the music
and instrumentation. As mentioned previously, the Florentine
Camerata was the experiments of monody skills in opera rather
than instrumental. In early opera, the ritornello is seldomly
played after the final section, so the ritornello is a repeating
coincides with the number of verses. However, Monteverdi
concerned to use an instrumental movement which is composed
to introduce a song, ensemble or chorus, and play between each
of its verses.[footnoteRef:9] Monteverdi thought that
instrumentation was just as important as the voices, thus he
created instrumental movements – ritornello, sinfonia, toccata,
and moresca - it used in different ways in instrumental
movement and on different scales.[footnoteRef:10] One of
Monteverdi’s great instrumental works, Toccata, has a short and
radical opening like Prelude. It is written in all C major chords
but sounds in D major due to mutes are required which raise the
trumpets by one tone. During the Toccata, Monteverdi wrote to
all the instrumentations to play; he used for 40 instruments in
his published score; [9: David R. B. Kimbell, Italian Opera.
National Traditions of Opera. Cambridge England: Cambridge
University Press, 1991, 76] [10: Kimbell, 76.]
two each are listed of harpsichords, chamber organs, archlutes
(three occur in the score itself); one regals (portables reed organ
resembling a tiny harmonium); one large double harp; ten
normal strings of the violin family together with two tiny kits,
and five viols; a high recorder; four trombones (five occur in
the score); two cornetti (small wooden horns); three muted
trumpets, and one (clarion) trumpet played high, with drums not
mentioned but customarily present.[footnoteRef:11] [11:

5. Robert Donington, The opera. n.p.: New York : Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich, 1978, 22.]
Those are period instruments, either preserved as unique or
reformed; because of Monteverdi specified instruments in his
score, it is the point of transition from the Renaissance era to
Baroque period so it with particular use of polyphony. These
continuo ensemble and trumpets are extremely rich and have the
sound of the strings glorious with timbre.
The ritornellos is particularly noticeable “such dance-songs as
‘Lasciate I monti’ (Act I), ‘Vi ricordo’ (Act II), and ‘Vanne
Orfeo’ (Act V), where the rhythms, which have necessarily to
be treated with some restraint for the singing voices, can be
developed and decorated with splendid uninhibited verve by the
five-part instrumental ensemble.”[footnoteRef:12] According to
Schulengerg, as a string player could notice that Monteverdi
should have known string instruments and it closed to string
players’ capabilities. Monteverdi calls for unusual instruments
in score such as “piccioli alla francese – apparently, small
violins of a type then associated with French music – and
flautini.”[footnoteRef:13] As I examined Peri’s and
Monteverdi’s instrumental music in operas, I could detect why
Orfeo is more remarkably noticeable from the earlier operas
than the abundance, diversity, and importance of the
instrumental music. Monteverdi’s innovation was an integrated
musical form as monody, chorus, and he also extended an
orchestra. [12: Kimbell, 79.] [13: Schulengerg, 67.]
Types of monadic style is comparable that Recitative style is
declamatory speech, in contrast, Aria is the free-rhythm, more
florid, and musically either solo and solos alternating with
chorus. Both Peri’s and Monteverdi’s operas are sequences by a
five episode structure that each act interspersed by a closing
chorus. However, the difference is Peri’sstrophic song and
Monteverdi’s madrigal song[footnoteRef:14] and his Arias are

6. strophic but strophes are varied to reflect the text. [14: Robert
Cannon, Opera. Cambridge Introductions to Music. New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2012, 18. ]
As we know, Peri’s songs are in the nature of lyrical interludes
in the action; it’s placed usually at the ends of scenes. Peri’s
setting, sung by Orphesus in the closing section is a well-known
example of “Gioite al canto mio.”[footnoteRef:15] Monteverdi
was inspired by Peri’s Aria and Monteverdi developed different
approaches of conveying melodic song in the madrigal. In
Monteverdi’s madrigal in chorus, the voices were joined with
instrumental ensembles and they include solos and dances that
have sounded glow with it. For instance in Orfeo, after the
shepherdess tells the marriage god Hymen to pray of Orfeo and
Euridice, a shepherd in chorus and shepherdesses sing for a
Nymph, who are punctuated by a lively dance celebrating the
marriage. This is one of my favorite scenes that Monteverdi’s
chorus. After the sinfonia linking acts 1 and 2 follows from a
song and rhythm related to those heard in the “Ecco Orfeo”.
And it followed by Orfeo’s upcoming Aria, “Ecco pur ch’a voi
ritorno”.[footnoteRef:16] Because it is impressive that Orfeo is
alternating with Aria then a madrigal and a ballet. [15: Grout
and Williams, 45.] [16: Denis Arnold and Nigel Fortune, The
Monteverdi companion; edited by Denis Arnold and Nigel
Fortune (n.p.: New York, Norton, 1968), 261-262]
Moreover, Grout and Williams claim that “Passente spirto” is a
remarkable example of the florid solo style of this period. It
includes six strophes that have essentially identical bass in the
fifth of melodic variations. The first four strophes, Monteverdi
wrote were in a different set of vocal embellishments which he
built-in adding staff in the score. “These embellishments are
certainly comparable to those an accomplished singer of the
time would have been expected to add to a plain melodic
line.”[footnoteRef:17] A solo instrument “concertize” – that is,
collaborates and competes – with the voice, as Monteverdi does

7. here, was one destined to become important in later seventeenth
and eighteenth century opera aria.”[footnoteRef:18] [17: Grout
and William, 56.] [18: Grout and William, 56.]
Both Peri’s and Monteverdi’s operas are not the first operas;
however, their operas are new phenomenons that achieve artistic
development through an innovation of the ideas of ancient
Greek drama. Peri’s opera was paid close attention to monadic
styles such as recitative and aria. Although, the element of
Monteverdi’s opera was not created by himself, conductor
“Nikolaus Harnoncourt says “he blended the entire stock of
newest and older possibilities into a unity that was indeed new”
and Musicologist Robert Donionton writes, “[the score] contains
no element which was not based on precedent, but it reaches
complete maturity in that recentyle-developed from . . . Here
are words as directly expressed in music as [the pioneers of
opera] wanted them expressed; here is music expressing theme .
. . with the full inspiration of genius.””[footnoteRef:19]
Monteverdi’s opera is not only combines’ elements of Peri’s
monadic style, but also he also formed new techniques through
monadic style, instrumentations, and choral music and started
with a Greek myth. These ideas and changes successfully
arrived at Opera as we know it today. [19: Monteverdi’s
L’Orfeo,
https://courses.lumenlearning.com/music/chapter/monteverdis-
lorfeo/]
Bibliography
Carter, Tim. Monteverdi's musical theatre / Tim Carter. n.p.:
New Haven : Yale University
Press, c2002.

8. Schulenberg, David. Music of the Baroque. New York; Oxford;
Oxford University Press, 2014
Grout, Donald Jay and Williams, Hermine Weigel. A Short
Histroy of Opera. 4th ed. New York: Columbia University
Press, 2003
Ringer, Mark. Opera's first master : the musical dramas of
Claudio Monteverdi / Mark
Ringer. n.p.: Pompton Plains, N.J. : Amadeus Press, 2006
Kimbell, David R. B. Italian Opera. National Traditions of
Opera. Cambridge England: Cambridge University Press, 1991
Donington, Robert. The opera. n.p.: New York : Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich, 1978
Cannon, Robert. Opera. Cambridge Introductions to Music. New
York: Cambridge University Press, 2012
Arnold, Denis and Fortune, Nigel. The Monteverdi companion;
edited by Denis Arnold and Nigel Fortune (n.p.: New York,
Norton, 1968