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 di Paolo for the sculptures of the base of the façade, the project for the windows, and the wooden altarpiece in the chapel of the Magi by Bartolomeo Bolognini. Jacopo di Paolo Jacopo di Paolo (1345 approx. - 1430 approx.) was an Italian painter and miniaturist active in Bologna in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Jacopo di Paolo at the beginning of his career was active at Mezzaratta Church, where he frescoed two Stories of Moses. These pieces were probably based on ideas of Jacopo Avanzi and have a clear influence of the new-giottism and late Gothic of Giovanni da Modena. The