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
The Red Peri leaves much to be desired." "The Red Peri" appears in the following Stanley G. Weinbaum collections: The Project Gutenberg versions of "The Dawn of Flame" and "A Martian Odyssey" do not contain "The Red Peri". The full text of the novella is available here: https://web.archive.org/web/20121023021553/http://homepage.ntlworld.com/forgottenfutures/weinbaum/peri.htm The Red Peri "The Red Peri" is a science fiction novella by Stanley G. Weinbaum that first appeared in the November 1935 issue of "Astounding Stories". Sam Moskowitz has noted that Weinbaum planned to write a series of sequels to "The Red Peri" but died before he could do so. "The Red Peri" is the