Any attempt to write a history of the libretto is fraught with paradox. Almost without exception, a text is the starting point for any opera. Indeed, before Mozart, and often after, the libretto was normally complete before the composer put pen to paper, for all that it might then be revised according to the musical and other demands made upon it. As we shall see, its poetry usually had quite precise musical implications. Moreover, in early opera the poet was normally the prime mover in the operatic enterprise, not just by devising the subject and fleshing it out with appropriate words, but also given his often standard role as director of the production. The libretto was itself the public face of opera in terms of the artefacts that survive to record a given performance: libretti were usually printed for general consumption inside or outside the theatre, whereas musical scores were, on the whole, regarded as more ephemeral performance materials, to be adopted, adapted, and disposed of at will. Poets also acted as the chief ideologues of opera, promoting and defending the genre against its detractors and inserting it into broader literary and cultural debates. In a very real sense, the history of the libretto is the history of opera tout court.1

Euridice had a poetic text by Ottavio Rinuccini, and music by Jacopo Peri and Giulio Caccini; its performers included Florentine singers plus others from Mantua and Rome; and its sponsor, Jacopo Corsi, was one of the four instrumentalists who provided the accompaniment. Although it is the “first” opera to have survived complete, it has tended to be treated as an academic exercise, and as a mere forerunner of the seemingly more successful early operas by the likes of Claudio Monteverdi. But having reconstructed the stage, it is now possible to read Euridice in a much more practical light, as something of and for the theatre. Both the text and the music make much more sense in these pragmatic terms, especially given the hitherto unrecognized revisions made to the libretto as decisions needed to be made during the rehearsals leading up to the premiere. Matters of casting, stage movement, costumes, and gesture all come into play, often cued by explicit or implicit directions in the surviving sources. This also offers a more careful way of reading poetic librettos and musical scores that are too often viewed in the abstract without grasping their performative functions.

Cigoli’s sets for Euridice continued to be used in the Sala delle Commedie in the Palazzo Pitti, although by 1608 they were being replaced by a more complex stage and scenery intended for different kinds of entertainments (often involving dancing) that were better suited to princely tastes. Opera briefly gained a stronger foothold in different spaces, often in patrician residences (as with Marco da Gagliano’s new setting of Rinuccini’s first libretto, Dafne, performed in 1611 in the palace occupied by Don Giovanni de’ Medici). However, the genre’s history was patchy until the establishment of the first “public” opera houses in Venice from 1637 on. But this, in turn, raises questions about how “early” operas might best be staged today. So-called Historically Informed Performance – using the resources and techniques to create music as it might have sounded in the past – is now well established in musical circles, but less so in their theatrical equivalent. The search for relevance on the part of modern directors also makes opera production a fraught site of contest between the sources and what to do with them. Is any historical reconstruction of Euridice a mere archeological curiosity, or an opportunity to give it new life?

The stage and sets for Euridice were designed by the Florentine artist Lodovico Cardi, called “Il Cigoli.” His invoice survives, as do an inventory of their elements made when they were disassembled and put into storage, and a list of materials provided by the mattress maker, Francesco Ricoveri. These documents are remarkably precise, even with measurements, and they would permit an accurate reconstruction of the staging of the opera in the room in the Palazzo Pitti originally intended for it, the current Sala delle Nicchie (although it was eventually done in a different space later known as the Sala delle Commedie). Cigoli’s contribution renders problematic conventional views of any shift from “Renaissance” to “Baroque” scenography. The three main issues concern the design of the proscenium, how to render a proper perspectival view, and the most effective way to make set changes (Euridice moves from a pastoral scene to an Underworld one and back), whether by way of rotating “periaktoi,” sliding flats, or canvases pulled up and down. Our digital reconstructions make clear how things worked for the opera from the point of view of the stage itself, and as to what the audience saw.

The marriage of Maria de’ Medici and King Henri IV in October 1600 was a triumph of Florentine diplomacy celebrated by a range of entertainments. Some were provided by the Medici, and others by young patricians such as Jacopo Corsi to gain their favor. They also used the occasion to display a novel form of musical theatre recently developed in Florence: opera. Euridice was performed on a temporary stage before a small audience in the Medici’s private residence (the Palazzo Pitti), and Il rapimento di Cefalo in the much larger Teatro degli Uffizi. Not all went well: members of the old guard, including the theatre designer Bernardo Buontalenti and the Florentine intellectual Giovanni de’ Bardi were highly critical. But the choice to have dramas presented entirely in music was both artistic and political. It also forced painters, poets, and musicians to create innovative solutions to typical theatrical problems. The archival documents presented here include inventories, financial accounts, and memoranda that pose important questions about the mechanisms for creating, administering, and funding such events, moving far beyond conventional notions of princely extravagance.