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 Brocardo Jacopo Brocardo Jacopo Brocardo (Anglicised as James Brocard(e), ) (c.1518 – 1594?) was an Italian Protestant convert and biblical interpreter. He regarded the year 1584 as the inauguration of a major new cycle. He prophesied that the last age would last 120 years from the birth of Martin Luther in 1483. As an apocalyptic thinker he was influenced by Martin Cellarius. He was born in Pinerolo around 1518. He became a scholar and grammarian, and a follower of Giulio Camillo. Brocardo is not considered a very reliable witness to his own biography. He was in France in the late 1540s,