The court spectacles, to be sure, did not go out of existence.

We meet them in all their brilliancy in the early years of the seventeenth century, and at the same time we find them copied in a somewhat modified form in the spectacular productions of the young Italian opera houses.

On the other hand, when the Florentine coterie created dramatic recitative, it was to use it in a drama wholly serious and poetic in purpose.

It was not till some years later that recitative acquired sufficient flexibility to fit itself into the plan of the rapidly growing opera buffa.

Yet even in this lyric species we discern something of the large influence of the humorous madrigal play, for in time the comic opera and the ballet spectacle both found homes after public opera houses had been thrown open to an eager public.