The form of entertainment called opera had its origin a little more than three centuries ago in an effort made by a company of scholars and musical amateurs in Florence to rescue music from the artificiality into which the composers, who were all churchmen, had forced it. The Florentine group had convinced themselves by study that music had been effectively linked with poetry and action in the Greek stage-plays, and in striving to imitate these they created the art-form which in time came to be called “opera”--though at first it was known by names all more or less closely connected with the terms which the composers of today use to describe their dramatic works,--lyric dramas, musical drama…
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