1607
Jamestown Founded
One hundred and four English settlers, mostly gentlemen unaccustomed to labor, stepped off three leaky ships onto a mosquito-ridden peninsula in the James River and named it for their king. Within a year, two-thirds would be dead of starvation, disease, and Powhatan arrows. English America had begun, and with it the slow, bloody transformation of a continent.
Flight of the Earls
Beaten and beggared, the great Gaelic lords of Ulster, O'Neill of Tyrone and O'Donnell of Tyrconnell, boarded a French ship at Rathmullan with ninety followers and sailed for the Continent. Their lands were declared forfeit to the Crown. The plantation of Ulster with English and Scots Protestants soon followed, sowing divisions that would fester for four centuries.
Monteverdi's Orfeo Performed at Mantua
At the Gonzaga court, the composer Claudio Monteverdi unveiled a new form combining recitative, madrigal, and drama in the story of Orpheus descending to Hades. Opera as we know it was born that night, complete with overture, aria, and the first truly tragic operatic ending. The score demanded an orchestra of forty instruments, unprecedented for its time.
Orfeo Premieres at Mantua
Claudio Monteverdi's L'Orfeo, considered the first great opera and the earliest still regularly performed, premiered at the ducal palace of the Gonzagas in Mantua during carnival. Its combination of madrigal choruses, toccata overture, and expressive recitative established the essential architecture of the operatic form. The work proved that music could carry dramatic narrative with the emotional force of spoken theater.