Having said that, however, one feels troubled by the trap of a formula that is perhaps too neat: does spontaneous generation exist more in music than in biology? And what is opera? What do L’Orfeo, Don Juan, the Ring, and Wozzeck have in common? Form? Drama? Nothing at all, taken separately, but together, yes.

And it was precisely by discovering for the first time a mode of convergence (the only one to achieve perfection?) between a dramatic recitative, a continuous melodic expression, and a formal architecture that Monteverdi, yes, wrote the first true opera.

Monteverdi, the "creator of the new"
It was in this way that Canon Artusi-a composer for whom nothing passed onto posterity except his enraged arguments against Monteverdi-baptized this musician. What could have occasioned the ire of the canon? Quite simply the phenomenon of a new mode of musical expression.

It was alright that a few intellectuals and artists in Florentine circles at the close of the 16th century speculated about the respective merits of Greek tragedy and ancient music. It was alright that one of them, Jacopo Peri, right at the turn of the century, and after Dafne, produced a surprising, if a bit monotonous, L’Euridice for the wedding of Henry IV and Marie of Medici-if not the first opera, then the first attempt at dramma per musica. The first story entirely set to music, instead of a succession of independent madrigals that had been performed up to that time at princely soirées.

Monteverdi followed this movement, and Artusi ...

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