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 Strada Jacopo Strada Jacopo Strada (Mantua, 1507 — Prague 1588) was an Italian polymath courtier of the 16th century, a painter, architect, goldsmith, inventor of machines, numismatist, linguist, collector and merchant of works of art. His portrait by Titian has kept his image familiar. He is supposed to have received early training as a goldsmith in the Mantua workshops of Giulio Romano; drawings of Giulio's Palazzo del Tè and of its painted interiors and those of the Palazzo Ducale at Mantua, datable 1567-68, are attributed to Jacopo Strada, intended for his "Descrizione di tutta Italia". From 1552 to 1555 he sojourned