Note 28 — Chapter IX

"Although the existence of 'Orfeo' as an opera appears to me to be problematical, there would be nothing impossible about the construction of a tragedy accompanied by music, because instruments were cultivated in Italy more than in France. Before that epoch the Medici had given concerts at Florence. Giovanni de Medici died in 1429, and Cosimo, who succeeded him and reigned till 1464, gave at the Pitti Palace concerts where there were as many as four hundred musicians. Under his successors and before the death of Alexander de' Medici in 1537, the violinists Pietro Caldara and Antonio Mazzini were often the objects of veritable ovations, and about the same time, 1536, at Venice, was played a piece called 'Il Sacrificio,' in which violins sustained the principal parts."—"Les Origines de l'Opera et le Ballet de la Reine," par Ludovic Celler. Paris, 1868.