HERCULES DANCING IN THEBES, IN PICTURES AND MUSIC

A general assumption persists among musicologists and dance historians that dance in seventeenth-century operas was a French phenomenon, with Italians only occasionally staging a final ballo. In large part the assumption is the result of lack of information concerning dance in seventeenth-century opera, due, particularly in comparison with other periods, to limited source material and limited research. The situation is exacerbated by the fact that when Italian operas included balli at the end of one or more acts, dance indications in the librettos tended to be brief, and the dance music appeared only rarely in scores.