In the 1590s, Peri worked for Jacopo Corsi, the most important patron of music in Florence. They felt that art at that time (music, drama, painting etc.) was not as good as the classical art that had been produced 2000 years ago in Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome. They wanted to write drama like the old Greek tragedies. In music they started to write "monody", which meant a solo song with a continuo bass accompaniment. They soon started to realize that just monody on its own could become boring, so they developed it into recitative (where the story could be told) and aria (where the singers could express their feelings in song). Peri and Corsi asked the poet Ottavio Rinuccini to write some words for them and together they produced the opera "Dafne". It was probably nothing like what the Ancient Greeks would have done, but it was the first opera in modern times.
In 1600, Rinuccini and Peri wrote another opera together: "Euridice". We still have the music "Euridice", although unfortunately the music to "Dafne" has been lost.
Peri wrote several other operas, although they are not great works. However, a very great composer was around at the time. His name was Claudio Monteverdi. In 1607, he started writing operas and his operas are often performed today.
1600 is the date usually thought of as the beginning of the Baroque music period. It is a convenient date because it is when opera started.
Blake Hall tube station
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Francesco Cavalli
Francesco Cavalli (born Crema, Lombardy, 14 February 1602; died 14 January 1676) was an Italian composer. He lived in the early part of the Baroque music period. His real name was Pietro Francesco Caletti-Bruni, but he is better known as Cavalli, which was the name of his patron, a Venetian nobleman. He is remembered for his operas.
Cavalli was born at Crema, Lombardy. He became a singer at St Mark's in Venice in 1616, then he was organist there, and in 1668 he became "maestro di cappella".
He began to write for the theatre in 1639. Soon after that the first public opera house opened in Venice. Cavalli became so famous that he was invited to Paris in 1660 where he performed his opera "Xerxes". He visited Paris again in 1662. He died in Venice at the age of 73.
Cavalli lived at the time that opera had just been invented by Jacopo Peri. Claudio Monteverdi composed the first really good operas. Cavalli became the most important Italian writer of operas in the middle of the 17th century. His operas use small orchestras, unlike those of Monteverdi, who was writing for the court in Mantua where there was lots of money for big orchestras. Cavalli had a good sense of drama and he wrote lovely melodies.
He wrote 57 operas, of which 27 survived. He also wrote some church music and some instrumental music.
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Verismo is a word which refers to a type of literature and a type of opera that was popular towards the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. The Italian word "verismo" means "realism".