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Nearly all the accessories of the modern theatre were invented by the Italians. In the chapter on architecture the story is told in some detail. The Venetians first constructed the theatre with two tiers of boxes arranged circularly round a pit sloping backwards as at present and Pontana, a generation later, invented the horseshoe form. Baldassare Peruzzi at Rome had invented the painted moveable scenes and then added the recessed stage with the frame around it which makes the representation a picture. A great many stage effects were introduced by the Italians, storms and wind and rain and snow, and even a very lifelike earthquake being represented before the end of the fifteenth century. Nearly all of the picturesque elements in theatricals come from Italian sources. They solved the problems of how to have as large a number as possible in a theatre to hear the human voice and see the human countenance and yet seat them in reasonable comfort. La Scala at Milan, built by Piermarini over 200 years ago, is thought by some authorities to be the best made theatre in existence.

Most people know that we are indebted for a great many of the developments in music to the Italians, yet few realize how many epoch-making inventions and discoveries relating to music come from Italy. The scale was invented down there and almost needless to say this represented a cardinal discovery for the evolution of music. Plain chant is of Italian origin and literally thousands upon thousands of melodies of all kinds, that is successions of single notes that for some reason not easy to understand appealed to the human ear have been there arranged. Harmony and counter point were developed in Italy, oratorio and opera were in vented, comic opera and musical comedy received their development and opera houses suitable for the production of these various kinds of musical dramas constructed. Musical instruments were improved, the orchestra received its evolution until there is scarcely a department of music of any kind in which Italians are not the most significant pioneers.