From Frottola Drama to Madrigal With such a simple and dignified beginning as that of the "Orfeo" how came the lyric drama of the next century to wander into such sensuous luxuriance, such spectacular extravagance of both action and music?
In the drama of Poliziano the means employed, as well as the ends sought, were artistic and full of suggestions as to possible methods of development.

But whereas the opera in the seventeenth century suffered from contact with the public, the lyric drama of the sixteenth was led into paths of dalliance by the dominant taste of splendor-loving courts.
The character of this taste encouraged the development of the musical apparatus of the lyric drama toward opulent complexity, and the medium for this was found in the rapidly growing madrigal, which soon ruled the realm of secular music.

In it the frottola, raised to an art form and equipped with the wealth of contrapuntal device, passed almost insensibly into a new life.

Berlioz says that it takes a long time to discover musical Mediterraneans and still longer to learn to navigate them.

The madrigal was a musical Mediterranean.