The exotic entertainment Evelyn described is of course opera. That he should find the form a novelty is hardly surprising; the world’s first public opera houses had been established in the city of the Doges less than a decade earlier. For the first half century or so of its history opera had been the exclusive preserve of princes and noblemen, a court entertainment owing as much to the splendour of Renaissance intermedii as to the new dramatic impetus articulated by the invention of the stile recitativo. From its earliest manifestations in Florence, opera quickly discovered the genius capable of elevating the nascent form to instant maturity. On 24 February 1607 the first performance of Claudio Monteverdi’s Orfeo in one of the salons of the ducal palace in Mantua, an epoch making event heard and witnessed by a select few, inadvertently laid the foundation stone of a musical form that would gain a world-wide popularity that remains undiminished.