It was acted with unparalleled applause; for this pastoral drama offered something ravishingly new, something which interpreted and gave a vocal utterance to tastes and sentiments that ruled the age.

While professing to exalt the virtues of rusticity, the _Aminta_ was in truth a panegyric of Court life, and Silvia reflected Leonora in the magic mirror of languidly luxurious verse.

Poetry melted into music.

Emotion exhaled itself in sensuous harmony.

The art of the next two centuries, the supreme art of song, of words subservient to musical expression, had been indicated.
This explains the sudden and extraordinary success of the _Aminta_.