Few realise, as they jostle to strain to see the masterpieces at the great Uffizi Gallery in Florence, that the building had been used to house one of the most spectacular entertainments since the Roman games and one which can be thought of as the birth of opera.

In 1587, Ferdinand de Medici, having inherited the title of Grand Duke of Tuscany, possibly by poisoning his brother, the Grand Duke Francesco, ordained that a sumptuous display be put on to mark his wedding to Christine of Lorraine. By sumptuous he meant sumptuous. This was, after all, a show-piece marriage that carried implications throughout Europe, implications that were military and political of course, but which also defined patterns of extravagance for centuries to come. And as we would expect of that great city in those great times, all of this was matched by an extravagance of creativity unimaginable in our society that bundles art with sport and something called heritage.

Today Botticclli's "Birth of Venus", an allegory of the arrival of Catherine de Medici [SHALL CHECK IT WAS HER IT MIGHT BE CHRISTINE HERSELF], hangs in the Uffizi in the space where first these extravagances were staged. I say space, not room, because the staging of the Intermedi occupied the barn-like entirety of the floor, with no rooms partitioned off as they are today. The décor was entrusted to Bernardo Buontalenti who has survived - just - in popular imagination through an ubiquitous postcard on sale in Florence, of a drawing of the Pitti Palace in a capricious, easy flowing style, surprisingly modern in feel, a little like Dufy. This fluid sense of fantasy was ideally suited to the batch of five mythological tales that were to make up the musical entertainment: the Harmony of the Spheres, Apollo and the Dragon, the Foretelling of the Golden Age, Arion and the Dolphin and the Divine Gifts of Rhythm and Harmony.

The Intermedi, mostly written by Cristofano Malvezzi but with segments by others, formed interludes - hence their title - between the acts of a romantic farce, as was the taste; and by contrast they had as their lofty theme the Power of Music. This was very much a topic of the time, with theorists at each other over questions of antiquity and authority in a battle between the merits and moral values of polyphony versus monody. It is not going too far to say that from the lavish triumph of monody in these Intermedi, the triumph of the single line, in recitative and aria, so suited to drama, came the birth not only of Opera but of opera as spectacle...

Buontalenti’s staging called for colossal machinery that took nearly a year to construct - even Wagner would have recoiled from such demands! - to create illusions of clouds, seas, caves and a fire-spitting dragon. The astonishing machinery used to complete Brunellesco’s dome on their cathedral had given the Florentines a pride in their engineering and a relish both for impossible projects and for the machines with which to defeat impossibility - winches, cranes, pulley systems and so on. Buontalenti indulged himself and his Duke.

We are lucky to have contemporary accounts both of the staging and of the musical performance - the players were in elaborate costume too - as well as the music, indeed, since Ferdinand’s proud decision to publish it was unusual. There was a Mount Olympus that rose from the stage and a ship that crossed an ocean, the waves being done with a sequence of rollers whose turning simulates the undulations of the sea; between them the ship, complete with crew of three dozen, could cross the stage while mermaids and sea-sprites bobbed up and away.

These klunky old techniques are surprisingly visual and effective and the video version of Andrew Parrott’s pioneering recording of the mid-1980s does something to suggest what was seen on 2^nd May, 1589. The video overdoes tricksy camera effects, which only serves to underline how good the original blunt machinery and painted scenery must have been. Ferdinand was so chuffed by it all, he ordered a repeat performance and then it was all over: the entertainment dynasty of operatic excess was born, taking us to Bayreuth and Hollywood. Where next?