Jacopo PeriJacopo Peri (August 20, 1561 - August 12, 1633) was
an Italian composer and singer, often called the inventor of
opera. He wrote the first work to be called an opera today,
Dafne (around 1597), and also the first opera to have survived
to the present day, Euridice (1600). Peri was probably born in
Rome, but studied in Florence with Cristofano Malvezzi, and went
on to work in a number of churches there. He subsequently began
to work in the Medici court, first as a tenor singer and
keyboard player, and later as a composer. His earliest works
were incidental music for plays and madrigalss. In the 1590s,
Peri became associated with Jacopo Corsi, the leading patron of
music in Florence. A general feeling that contemporary art was
inferior to classical Greek and Roman works led to them
attempting to recreate Greek tragedy. The poet Ottavio Rinuccini
was brought in to write a text, and the result, Dafne, though
nowadays thought to be a long way from anything the Greeks would
have recognised, is seen as th