Opera is the symptom of which it claims to be the cure. It is a performative contradiction, presenting the quadrivium while demonstrating the trivium, so that the ancient magic it wants is negated by the method it uses. Antiquity and modernity simply cancel each other out as a contradiction of content and form.

It is tempting to hear opera within the magical episteme that it tries to conjure up on stage. Nature is painted as an enchanted idyll where Orpheus sings of the celestial spheres in ways not dissimilar to Ficino's incantation of magical songs. Indeed, if Poliziano's Orfeo is an opera in embryo, then opera's lineage is surely related to the improvised style of incantatory speech which Poliziano knew from Ficino himself. Is not Monteverdi's Orfeo drawing from the same source of Orphic mysticism? When Orpheus intones his prayer to Apollo, accompanying himself on the lira da braccio, is he not performing the magical rituals prescribed by Ficino? No, because for Ficino magic was a practice that worked in reality, whereas in opera it is a performance staged in the reality of the work.

Moreover, there is no direct line that connects Poliziano's Orfeo to Monteverdi's.