Jacopo Peri Jacopo Peri Jacopo Peri (20 August 156112 August 1633), known under the pseudonym Il Zazzerino, I was an Italian composer and singer of the transitional period between the Renaissance and Baroque styles, and is often called the inventor of opera. He wrote the first work to be called an opera today, "Dafne" (around 1597), and also the first opera to have survived to the present day, "Euridice" (1600). Peri was born in Rome, but studied in Florence with Cristofano Malvezzi, and went on to work in a number of churches there, both as an organist and as a singer. He
Jacopo Sannazaro Jacopo Sannazaro Jacopo Sannazaro (; 28 July 1458 – 6 August 1530) was an Italian poet, humanist and epigrammist from Naples. He wrote easily in Latin, in Italian and in Neapolitan, but is best remembered for his humanist classic "Arcadia", a masterwork that illustrated the possibilities of poetical prose in Italian, and instituted the theme of Arcadia, representing an idyllic land, in European literature. Sannazaro's elegant style was the inspiration for much courtly literature of the 16th century, including Sir Philip Sidney's "Arcadia". He was born in 1458 at Naples of a noble family of the Lomellina, that claimed to