WHO RULES?

Were political ideas embedded in the first operas? If so, what were they and what did they imply? What does the political world in which opera was born tell us about this art form? What do operas tell us about politics? To approach these questions, we turn first not to words and music bound together for the stage, but to a wedding celebration.

The couple didn't marry for love. They wed out of political duty. It was in Florence in the autumn of 1600 that Maria de' Medici, niece of Tuscany's Grand Duke Ferdinando I, became the queen of France's King Henri IV. Their union fortified a partnership between Florence and Paris against Savoy and, in the larger picture of European politics, it strengthened them both against the Habsburg rulers of Spain (with whom Henri had recently been at war) and the Holy Roman Empire.

Spanish imperial power had grown throughout the fragmented political world of the Italian peninsula in the mid-sixteenth century. Ferdinando I had altered past Tuscan policies aiming to balance Spanish power with increased French power. In this context, he had recognized the value to Tuscany of Henri of Navarre's struggle to attain the French throne. By the time Henri, the Huguenot-turned-Catholic, married Maria, he was both King Henri IV and indebted financially and politically to her relatives. Florence's ruling clan and premier banking family supported him in French power struggles. Negotiations for a connubial alliance, with a suitably large dowry, had gone on for some eight years.

The groom didn't come to the ceremony. He was engaged elsewhere — against the troops of Savoy's Duke Carlo Emanuele I. Henri IV's love interests were elsewhere as well, with his mistress, and not with reputedly tempestuous Maria. He sent a surrogate for the nuptials in Florence's cathedral on October 5. The king missed a lavish occasion, the sort of display that princely families gave to promote their prestige at home and abroad. The banquet at Palazzo Vecchio (the old municipal citadel that had once been the seat of Florence's republic) was opulent. Each dish comprised part of an allegory extolling the illustrious couple and their kin. Icing on the cake was molded as a wintry landscape. Sugar-animals moved about on it, and changed shape. Two hundred and thirty-three years later this "vast magnificence" on which "no expenses were spared" was presented as the "most distinguished occurrence" in the reign of Ferdinando I in a history written by Lorenzo L. Da Ponte, the son of Mozart's librettist, then a professor of Italian literature at a college in New York.

Henri IV also missed a milestone in Western culture. A variety of public and private events celebrated the new union. The principal theme was universal peace. The Abduction of Cephalus by Gabriello Chiabrera with accompanying music by Giulio Caccini — most of it is lost — played at the Uffizi Theater. More important historically was Eurydice — Euridice in the original — which is often called the second opera. These works originated in efforts within Florentine circles to marry words, music, and tale in a new way. Euridice was performed on Friday, October 6, on the second floor of the Pitti Palace, the duke's official residence, in the rooms of a Medici family member. It recounted how mythic Orpheus, armed only with his famous voice and his lyre, braved the Underworld to retrieve his love. Poor Eurydice, the treenymph, had died of snakebite on their wedding day. The performance, the first that could be called public, was a present to the new queen from Jacopo Corsi, a nobleman, patron of the arts, and longtime champion of marriage between Henri and Maria. (It had probably been completed by the previous spring because there had been a performance of it in May, also in a salon at the Pitti Palace, at the request of the archduchess.) The librettist, Ottavio Rinuccini, was a Florentine court poet. Jacopo Peri, a musician and singer who played a vibrant role in Florentine commercial life and served in a wide variety of Florentine governmental and legal offices, composed most of the music, although segments were by Caccini. The latter, Peri's archcompetitor, was also known as "Giulio Romano" because he was born and had studied in Rome (Caccini rushed to put into print his own musical setting of the libretto within two months of the performance.)

Dafne, usually credited as the first opera, was an earlier Corsi-RinucciniPeri effort based on another myth. A small audience saw it in Corsi's palazzo during Carnival 1597–98. Corsi and his collaborators were men of the late Renaissance, and they aimed to create a contemporary counterpart to ancient Greek tragedy. Their experiment was also one result of several decades of discussion of music within the Florentine artistic and intellectual worlds; these, in turn, corresponded to historical and political transformations in Florence and, more broadly, Europe. While Euridice was published, most of Dafne's music is lost. We do have descriptions of Dafne's first presentation. "It was performed in a small room and sung privately" with "a consort of instruments" playing, one observer recalled years later. "I was stunned at this marvel." The entire work was sung through with musical accompaniment. Its novelty was a kind of musical declamation or declamatory song that later evolved into the conventions of recitative. Another witness, the composer Marco da Gagliano (he reset the libretto to his own music in 1608), commented that the experiment showed to Rinuccini "how apt song was to express all kinds of emotions," and that it could lead "to incredible delight."

But it was Euridice, some two years later, that effectively launched the new art form.

It is improbable that Euridice's audience, estimated at two hundred people, mostly noble, recognized the evening's...