Origins of opera
"Dafne" by Jacopo Peri was the earliest composition considered opera, as understood today, although with only five instrumental parts it was much more like a chamber opera than either the preceding intermedi or the operas of Claudio Monteverdi a few years later. It was written around 1597, largely under the inspiration of an elite circle of literate Florentine humanists who gathered as the "Camerata". Significantly, "Dafne" was an attempt to revive the classical Greek drama, part of the wider revival of antiquity characteristic of the Renaissance. The members of the Camerata considered that the "chorus" parts of Greek dramas were originally sung, and possibly even the entire text of all roles; opera was thus conceived as a way of "restoring" this situation. The libretto was by Ottavio Rinuccini, who had written some of the 1587 Medici intermedi, in which Peri had also been involved; Rinuccini appears to have recycled some of the material, at least from the scene illustrated at right. Most of the music for "Dafne" is lost (the libretto was printed and survives), but one of Peri's many later operas, "Euridice", dating from 1600, is the first opera score to have survived to the present day.
Opera management
Publicly performed operas first appeared in Venice during the Carnival season of 1637. This was facilitated by the large number of public theatres already present in the city which originally served for the production of plays. They were built by noble families such as the Grimani, Tron, and Vendramin. The rebuilt Teatro San Cassiano, sponsored by the Tron family, was the first in the world specifically devoted to opera. Performances of "L'Andromeda" in 1637 by librettist Benedetto Ferrari and composer Francesco Manelli marked the theatre's first commercially produced opera. In the majority of cases the patrician Venetian owners profited from their theatres by renting them out to others who produced and managed the opera performances. The key figure in the actual production of the operas was the impresario, who assembled the singers, musicians and creative team and made the business and artistic decisions. Sometimes the impresarios were hired by the theatre renters and their backers. On other occasions the impresario was also one of the investors and the renter of the theatre. The "cassier" (cashier) was in charge the financial side of the production, including handling the payments and receipts. While the "cassier" was sometimes a separate member of the management team, in many instances the impresario also acted as the "cassier". One of the most famous impresarios of the day was Marco Faustini who managed several Venetian opera houses in the course of his career.