Make Sweet the Minds of Men: Early Opera and Tragic Catharsis
The art now known as opera came into being circa 1600 as a Florentine imitation of Greek tragic theater. Its original intent was to move individuals and society toward the return of a perceived Golden Age. What follows are quotations lifted from the text:
"Do you not then deprive our Courtier of music, which does not only make sweet the minds of men, but also many times wild beasts tame? Music . . . has always been renowned among them of old time and counted a holy matter. . . . It has been the opinion of most wise philosophers that the world is made of music, and the heavens in their moving make a melody, and our soul framed after the very same sort, and therefore lifts itself up and revives the virtues and force of itself with music."
Baldassare Castiglione 1528
The myth of Orpheus and Euridice has been used for over forty operas. At least fifteen of these were written from 1599 to 1690:
“Had I the lips of Orpheus and his melody to charm the maiden daughter of Demeter and her lord, and by my singing win you back from death, I would have gone beneath the earth, and not the hound of Pluto could have stayed me, nor the ferryman of ghosts, Charon at his oar. I would have brought you back to life.” Euripides, Alcestis
“If there is any common thread that unifies the great variety of music that we call baroque, then, it is an underlying faith in music's power, indeed its obligation, to move the affections.” Claude Palisca
Aristotle described tragic poetry as achieving “through the representation of pitiable and fearful incidents, the catharsis of such pitiable and fearful incidents.”
“I believe that there is no one in the world so insensitive, so leaden, that he is not moved by song. Theophrastus rightly said in the second book on music that the essence of music is the movement of the soul, which drives away evils from the soul invaded by confusion.” Carlo Valgulio The Proem on Plutarch’s De Musica
“The tragedian who succeeds in enthralling his audience does more justice by the effect this has on his audience than the playwright who fails to capture them: likewise the member of the audience who succumbs to the spell of the play will through that experience be a better, wiser man than the member who resists and remains unmoved.” Gorgias
“Nothing is more characteristic of human nature than to be soothed by pleasant modes or disturbed by their opposites. This is not peculiar to people in particular endeavors or of particular ages.” Boethius
“Strive above all to arrange the verse well and to make the words comprehensible . . . just as the soul is nobler than the body, so the text is nobler than the counterpoint, and just as the mind should rule the body, so the counterpoint should receive its rule from the text.” Giovanni de’ Bardi (1534-1612), founder of the famed Florentine Camerata