Jacopo Peri

Jacopo Peri composed Dafne, generally regarded as the first opera. Born in Rome in 1561 to a family with Florentine connections, he trained in Florence as a singer, organist and composer, and was known as il Zazzerino for his long hair. He sang his own works, and had a considerable reputation as a tenor. He served the Medici court from the 1580s, and became involved with the Florentine Camerata, a circle of nobles, musicians and humanists meeting at Giovanni de' Bardi's house. Their argument was that contemporary polyphony, in which several voices sing different words at once, destroyed the text, and that Greek drama had been sung throughout in a manner that heightened speech rather than obscuring it. The solution developed by Peri and others was recitative — a vocal line following the rhythms and inflections of spoken Italian, supported by a sparse instrumental bass rather than by independent contrapuntal voices, so the words remain audible. Dafne, with a libretto by Ottavio Rinuccini, was performed privately during Carnival in 1598. Only fragments survive. Euridice followed in October 1600 for the wedding celebrations of Maria de' Medici and Henry IV of France, and is the earliest opera whose music survives complete. Peri sang the role of Orpheus. He and Giulio Caccini both contributed, and their rivalry over precedence was sharp; Caccini rushed his own setting into print first. The form was taken up almost immediately by Claudio Monteverdi, whose Orfeo of 1607 is the first opera still in the regular repertory. Peri continued as a court musician and administrator, wrote further stage works largely lost, and died in Florence in 1633.

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