Most of the music was written by Giulio Caccini but Stefano Venturi del Nibbio, Luca Bati and Piero Strozzi also contributed.
[1] The opera was the culmination of the celebrations for the (proxy) wedding of King Henri IV of France and Marie de' Medici in Florence in 1600 and was performed in the Sala delle Commedie in the Uffizi Palace on 9 October in front of an audience of 3,000 gentlemen and 800 ladies.
[2][3] Among the singers were Melchior Palantrotti, Jacopo Peri, Francesco Rasi and five members of Caccini's own family, including his daughter Francesca and his son Pompeo.
[5] Caccini published the final chorus and an aria in his collection Le nuove musiche (1602) but the rest of the score is lost.
In his description of the performance, Michelangelo Buonarotti the Younger claimed that four female members of the Caccini family ("with angelic voices") took part.