Abstract

Stage design as an independent component of operatic production began in the first decades of the seventeenth century. The festivals of the preceding era in the great towns of Florence and Rome as well as in smaller towns presented splendid opportunities for great artists – particularly Bernardo Buontalenti and the father/son team of Alfonso and Giulio Parigi – to create designs for grand spectacles of horse ballets, naval battles, celestial scenes, appearances of deities, and especially devils and demons, many set to voice and music as precursors to opera.