mere musical beauty to dramatic truth.  Those of his operas which remain to us show a far greater command of orchestral and vocal resource than Monteverde or Cavalli could boast, but so far as real expression and sincerity are concerned, they are inferior to the less cultured efforts of the earlier musicians.  It would be idle to attempt an enumeration of the Venetian composers of the seventeenth century and their works.  Some idea of the musical activity which prevailed may be gathered from the fact that while the first public theatre was opened in 1637, before the close of the century there were no less than eleven theatres in the city devoted to the performance of opera alone.

Meanwhile the enthusiasm for the new art-form spread through the cities of Italy.  According to an extant letter of Salvator Rosa’s, opera was in full swing in Rome during the Carnival of 1652.  The first opera of Provenzale, the founder of the Neapolitan school, was produced in 1658.  Bologna, Milan, Parma, and other cities soon followed suit.  France, too, was not behindhand, but there the development of the art soon deserved the name a new school of opera, distinct in many important particulars from its parent in Italy.  The French nobles who saw the performance of Peri’s ‘Euridice’ at the marriage of Henry IV. may have carried back tales of its splendour and beauty to their own country, but Paris was not as yet ripe for opera.  Not until 1647 did the French Court make the acquaintance of the new art which was afterwards to win some of its most brilliant triumphs in their city.  In that year a performance of Peri’s ‘Euridice’ (which, in spite of newer developments, had not lost its popularity) was given in Paris under the patronage of Cadinal Mazarin.  This was followed by Cavalli’s ‘Serse,’ conducted by the composer himself.  These performances quickened the latent genius of the French people, and Robert Cambert, the founder of their school, hastened to produce operas, which, though bearing traces of Italian influence, were nevertheless distinctively French in manner and method.  His works, two of which are known to us, ‘Pomone’ and ’Les Peines et les Plaisirs de l’Amour,’ were to a certain extent a development of the masques which had been popular in Paris for many years.  They are pastoral and allegorical in subject, and are often merely a vehicle for fulsome adulation of the ‘Roi Soleil.’  But in construction they are operas pure and simple.  There is no spoken dialogue, and the music is continuous from first to last.  Cambert’s operas were very successful, and in conjunction with his librettist Perrin he received a charter from the King in 1669, giving him the sole right of establishing opera-houses in the kingdom.  Quarrels, however, ensued.  Cambert and Perrin separated.  The charter was revoked, or rather granted to a new-comer, Giovanni Battista Lulli, and Cambert, in disgrace, retired to England, where he died.  Lulli (1633-1687) left Italy too young to be much influenced by the developments