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
Giovanni Peri Giovanni Peri Giovanni Peri (born September 19, 1969 in Perugia, Italy) is an Italian-born American economist who is Professor and Chair of the Department of Economics at the University of California, Davis, where he directs the Temporary Migration Cluster. He is also a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and the co-editor-in-chief of the peer-reviewed journal "Regional Science and Urban Economics". He is known for his research on the economic impact of immigration to the United States. For example, he has been critical of the work of George Borjas, which has concluded that immigration has negative economic