Italian opera "Dafne" by Jacopo Peri was the earliest composition considered opera, as understood today. Peri's works, however, did not arise out of a creative vacuum in the area of sung drama. An underlying prerequisite for the creation of opera proper was the practice of monody. Monody is the solo singing/setting of a dramatically conceived melody, designed to express the emotional content of the text it carries, which is accompanied by a relatively simple sequence of chords rather than other polyphonic parts. Italian composers began composing in this style late in the 16th century, and it grew in part from the long-standing
Jacopo Ripanda Jacopo Ripanda Jacopo Ripanda (Bologna, 15th century - Rome, c.1516) was an Italian painter of the Renaissance era. His works were mainly undertaken in his home town of Bologna, and in Rome, as a result of his numerous papal commissions for frescoes in churches and Vatican palaces. Little is known of the life and work of this painter, though he was highly admired in his lifetime. He was probably born in Bologna in the second half of the fifteenth century, from which the artist must have left at a fairly young age to travel to Rome during the pontificate of