It is a well-established fact that the early history of opera was marked by two events. One, the premiere performance of Peri’s Euridice, took place on 6 October 1600 in Florence; the other, the opening of Venice’s first public theatre, with a performance of Manelli’s Andromeda, occured in 1637. While music did not evolve significantly between the two dates (the recitar cantando remained the dominant musical form for most of the seventeenth century), the same cannot be said of the libretto, the text that inspired the music, which developed in Venice at a later date.