[Some Forerunners of Italian Opera by William James Henderson]@TWC D-Link bookSome Forerunners of Italian Opera CHAPTER VI 8/12
From every account we glean testimony that the costuming of these spectacles was admirable.
It must follow that so simple a task as the dressing of the characters in Poliziano's "Orfeo" was easily accomplished at that time when the Arcadian spirit of the story was precious to every cultured mind. There were no mechanical problems of stage craft to be solved.
The men who designed the cloud effects and the carriages for the floating angels in the open air spectacles might have disposed of them with ready invention, had they existed, but the theater of action, with its two pictures standing side by side, was simplicity itself.
But let us not fall into the error of supposing that the scenery was crude or ill painted.
The painter of the scenery of the production of Ariosto's "Suppositi," described by Pauluzo, was no less a personage than the mighty Raphael.
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