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 Facciolati Jacopo Facciolati Jacopo Facciolati (1682–1769) was an Italian lexicographer and philologist. He was born at Torreglia, in what is now the province of Padua (then in the Republic of Venice), in 1682. He was admitted to the seminary of Padua thanks to Cardinal Barberigo, who had formed a high opinion of the boy's talents. As professor of logic and regent of the schools, Facciolati became the leading academic of Padua university during a period of forty-five years. He published improved editions of several philological works, such as the "Thesaurus Ciceronianus" of Nizolius, and in 1719 he brought out a revised