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 da Leona I lament me of you"). Jacopo da Leona Jacopo da Leona, also spelt Iacopo (died 1277) was a medieval Italian jurist and poet. Beginning his career as a notary, he became a nobleman's secretary and later a judge. Sixty of his sonnets survive. Beginning life as Jacopo del Tancredo in the village of Levane, Arezzo, he took his later surname from the Castle of Leona ("Castello di Leona"), on which his village depended. Here Jacopo began to learn the work of a notary, under the patronage of the family of Ubertini of Arezzo, and one of the Ubertini, Ranieri, employed