Peri played the part of Apollo, and he was fitted to play the sun-god by his aureole of notoriously ardent hair.  According to Fetis, Peri was very avaricious.  Of noble birth himself, he grew rich on the favour of the Medicis, and added to his wealth by marrying a daughter of the house of Fortini, who incidentally brought with her a very handsome dot.  She bore him a son, who won an early fame by his mathematics, his temper, and his dissipations, which led his tutor, the famous Galileo, to call him his demon.  And this is all I know of the love affairs of the father of modern opera.

His collaborator, Caccini, who was more famous among his contemporaries than Peri, states in the preface to a book of his, that he was married twice, both times to pupils.  His former wife was a well-known singer, and his daughters were musicians, the elder, Francesca, being also a composer.

The name of Monteverde is immortal in the history of music, because, although no one sings his songs now, or hears his operas, even the strictest composers make constant use of certain musical procedures, which were in his time forbidden, and which he fought for tooth and nail.  Irisi says that he entered the Church after the death of his wife, and as he entered the priesthood in 1633, it would seem that she died when he was about sixty-five years of age.  He had two sons, the elder of whom became a priest, and a tenor in his father’s church; the younger son became a physician—­a good division of labour, for those patients whom the doctor lost could send for the priest.

Monteverde’s successor at St. Mark’s was Heinrich Schuetz, a great revolutionist in German music, whose chief work, and the first German opera, was “Dafne,” written to a libretto by Rinuccini, possibly the same one used by Peri.  When he was thirty-four, he married on June 1, 1619, a girl named Magdalena, who is described as “Christian Wildeck of Saxony’s land steward’s bookkeeper’s daughter,” which description Hawkins compares to that of “Pontius Pilate’s wife’s chambermaid’s sister’s hat.”  She died six years later, having borne him two daughters.  He lived the rest of his eighty-seven years as a widower, and joined the pathetic line of musicians who have gone deaf.

LULLY THE IMP

French opera, which was reformed by the Austrian Gluck, had been created by the Italian Signor Lulli, who later, as Monsieur Lully, became most French of the French.  Though he was the son of a gentleman of Florence, he was not gifted with wealth, and was taken to France to serve in the kitchen of Mlle. de Montpensier, the chief princess of the French court.  The impishness which characterised his whole career inspired him to turn a highly improper couplet on an accident that happened in public to Mademoiselle,—­and worst of all, he set it to music.  She did not see the fun of the joke, and dismissed him, but the king laughed so much at his wit, that he had him presented, and interested himself in his musical career.