He says: "To do the 'Orfeo' justice we ought to have heard it with its own accompaniment of music." He enlarges upon the failure of the author to seize the opportunity to make much of the really tragic moment in the play, namely that expressing the frenzied grief of Orfeo over the loss of Euridice.

Yet, he notes, "when we return from these criticisms to the real merit of the piece, we find in it a charm of musical language, a subtlety of musical movement, which are irresistibly fascinating.
Thought and feeling seem alike refined to a limpidity that suits the flow of melody in song.

The very words evaporate and lose themselves in floods of sound." Surely, here is the description of an ideal opera book.
Two editions of the play are known and both are published in a volume edited by Carducci.[15] The first version is that originally printed in 1494 and reprinted frequently up to 1776.

In the latter year the second version was brought out by Padre Ireneo Affo at Venice.

This was in all probability a revision of the poem by Poliziano.