History of Opera!

The beginnings of opera were crazy. A bunch of younger guys getting together -- composers, rich dilettantes, librettists, patrons, etc -- and deciding they were going to revolutionize music. And make performances as effective upon the soul and emotions as they believed the ancient Greeks had been able to do.

Then doing it.

Going off of possibly-wrong interpretations of fragmentary ancient documents concerning Greek plays, they got rid of polyphony, and started making large-scale productions involving instruments, clear speech-singing, and dance.

The first three operas were all the SAME STORY. (And often imitated one another's themes and motifs). They stumbled around for a bit, trying to get the balance of everything right, and the first ones are hardly ever performed, except as curiosities. But things finally started hitting a stride with Monteverdi's version of Euridiche, which is still performed today.

Somewhere in the mix of the three Euridiches, Jacopo Perri experimented with an opera that involved merpeople and dolphins -- which Medicis praised to the skies, and called it an "extraordinary spectacle, involving all the senses!"

And then there was Monteverdi...a master-composer famous for his madrigals, who continued to write in the old style even as he became famous as well for his work in the new style. And basically told his critics on both sides to stick it -- he was going to write whatever he darn well pleased. And he was GOOD, and could get away with it.

It would make great story, and I'd love to be able to find some way to tell it in a humorous, fiction-ish way someday. :) Or at least live to see Guy Gavriel Kay latch upon the idea, and do one of his brilliant historical-fantasy interpretations on the theme.