Luminalia or The Festival of Light was a late Caroline era masque or "operatic show", with an English libretto by Sir William Davenant, designs by Inigo Jones, and music by composer Nicholas Lanier.
Driven from Greece by Thracian invaders, and then from Italy by the Vandals and Goths, the Nine wander in search of a new home, finally finding it in Britain, "the garden of Britanides," with a welcoming king and queen.
The season's previous masque, Britannia Triumphans, had ended with the fall of night, and Luminalia picked up from that point, opening with a moonlit forest scene with deep shadows of trees and artificial moonlight glinting off a "calm river.
)[6] Innovative lighting effects continued through the work: it concluded with an "aerial ballet" in which Henrietta Maria, portraying the "Earthly Deity," descended from the clouds in "a glory of rays, expressing her to be the queen of brightness.
Early scholars and critics, confused by similar titles in the historical records, actually tried to attribute Luminalia to Thomas Lodge and Robert Greene, though both men were long dead by 1638.