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 Mazzoni Jacopo Mazzoni Jacopo Mazzoni (Latinized as Jacobus Mazzonius) (27 November 1548 – 10 April 1598) was an Italian philosopher, a professor in Pisa, and friend of Galileo Galilei. His first name is sometimes reported as "Giacomo". Giacopo (Jacopo) Mazzoni was born in Cesena, Italy in 1548. Educated in Bologna in Hebrew, Greek, Latin, rhetoric, and poetics, Mazzoni later attended the University of Padua in 1563 where he studied philosophy and jurisprudence. One of the most eminent savants of the period, Mazzoni was reported to have an excellent memory, which made him adept at recalling passages from Dante, Lucretius, Virgil, and