Jacopo Peri, born in Rome, had studied…

Jacopo Peri, born in Rome, had studied singing in Florence with Cristofano Malvezzi, and gone on to work in a number of churches there, both as an organist and as a singer.

He subsequently began to work in the Medici court, first as a tenor singer and keyboard player, and later as a composer.

His earliest works were incidental music for plays, intermedi and madrigals.

Peri had become associated with Jacopo Corsi, the leading patron of music in Florence.

Feeling that contemporary art is inferior to classical Greek and Roman works, they decide to attempt to recreate Greek tragedy, as they understand it.

Their work adds to that of the Florentine Camerata of the previous decade, which produced the first experiments in monody, the solo song style over continuo bass which will eventually develop into recitative and aria.

Peri and Corsi bring in the poet Ottavio Rinuccini to write a text, and the result, Dafne, though today thought to be far from anything the Classical Greeks would have recognized, is seen as the first work in a new form, opera.