A few attempts were made to import musical plays from Italy, as
Sacrati's La finta pazza (1645), Rossi's Orfeo (1647) and Cavalli's Xerse
and Ercole amante (1660-2), and French imitations seem to have been
attempted in 1646-7. But, though French taste for theatric spectacles
had long been supported by players and managers from Italy, the Italian
musical drama commanded but scant applause.
Meanwhile, the ballet advanced from its early miscellaneous plan to a more sustained unity. In this the literary leader was Isaac de Benserade (d. 1691), the court-poet, whose first work was given in 1651. But the progressive musical workers were Italians. Detached solo songs and part-songs began to be put forth in 1661 by Michel Lambert (d. 1696) the first important French singing-master, father-in-law of Lully.
85. Cambert and Lully.—Opera in French and according to French ideas took shape in the hands of the mediocre poet Perrin and the composer Cambert, the former of whom supplied much of the constructive impulse, while the latter was the executive genius. Their first joint experiment in 1659 was not followed up till 1671, when a more pretentious work was given in the first public opera-house in Paris.
Notable features in the plan adopted were these: an overture in three
movements, the first and last slow and sonorous, the second quick and
fugal; a grandiose and irrelevant prologue; a loose and rather miscellaneous
plot on a subject from Greek mythology, with more attention to
scenic display than to musical coherence or dramatic power; a constant
tendency to handle the recitative and arioso with emphasis on the declamatory
possibilities of the text; and a marked readiness to suspend
the action for ensembles of the ballet class. Whether Perrin or Cambert
originated any of these features is doubtful. It is more likely that they
were features to which French taste was already committed.
At this point appeared the Italian Lully, whose cleverness,
versatility and instinct for popularity presently made him the
leading figure. Securing the royal favor and a monopoly of
opera-production and occupying a new opera-house (built in
1672), he put forth a surprising series of works, both ballets and
real operas, which united the Italian and the French styles so
successfully as to establish the opera in Parisian regard, with
himself as its chief and almost only exponent. Without being
a genius of a high order, Lully was certainly talented on the
dramatic side, with a keen sense of the values of musical means.
At the same time when the Italian opera was already tending
to develop the music at the expense of the drama, he exalted
the forcible delivery of the words, even when he thus missed
