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 Torriti Jacopo Torriti Jacopo Torriti or Turriti was an Italian painter and mosaic maker who lived in the 13th century. He worked in the decoration especially in the apse of San Giovanni in Laterano and Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome. Those in the Lateran were carried out in conjunction with the Franciscan friar, Jacopo Camerino. They were executed between the years 1287 and 1292, and though in imitation of the style of Cimabue. There are no written documents about his life. In 1291 he signed the apse mosaics in the basilica San Giovanni in Laterano in Rome, which was nearly all