ABSTRACT
This is the earliest opera for which a complete score has survived. In the foreword to the score, set to a text (published a year earlier) by Ottavio Rinuccini, Peri set down the ideas of the Florentine Camerata (see #2438ff.). They and he believed that the ancient Greeks and Romans “sang their tragedies throughout” in a form between song and speech and “following the passions.” Quotations are from the translation in Strunk, 659-662.
