Editing Recitative (section)

== ''Secco'' ==
''Secco'' recitatives, popularized in Florence though the proto-opera music dramas of [[Jacopo Peri]] and [[Giulio Caccini]] during the late 16th century, formed the substance of [[Claudio Monteverdi]]'s operas during the 17th century, and continued to be used into the 19th century [[Romanticism (music)|Romantic era]] by such composers as [[Gaetano Donizetti]], reappearing in [[Stravinsky]]'s ''[[The Rake's Progress]]''. They also influenced areas of music outside opera.

In the early operas and cantatas of the Florentine school, ''secco'' recitatives were accompanied by a variety of instruments, mostly plucked fretted strings including the [[chitarrone]], often with a [[pipe organ]] to provide sustained tone. Later, in the operas of [[Antonio Vivaldi|Vivaldi]] and [[George Frideric Handel|Handel]], the accompaniment was standardised as a [[harpsichord]] and a bass [[viol]] or [[violoncello]]. When the harpsichord was gradually phased out over the late 18th century, and mostly disappeared in the early 19th century, many opera-houses did not replace it with the [[fortepiano]], a hammered-string keyboard invented in 1700.

Instead the violoncello was left to carry on alone, or with reinforcement from a [[double bass]]. A 1919 recording of [[Rossini]]'s ''[[Barber of Seville]]'', issued by [[La voce del padrone]], gives a unique glimpse of this technique in action, as do [[cello]] methods of the period and some scores of [[Meyerbeer]]. There are examples of the revival of the harpsichord for this purpose as early as the 1890s (e.g. by [[Hans Richter (conductor)|Hans Richter]] for a production of [[Mozart]]'s ''[[Don Giovanni]]'' at the London [[Royal Opera House]], the instrument being supplied by [[Arnold Dolmetsch]]), but it was not until the 1950s that the 18th-century method was consistently observed once more. In the 2010s, the early music revival movement has led to the re-introduction of harpsichord in some [[Baroque music|Baroque]] performances.

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