Florentine Camerata
The text of Rinuccini's "Dafne" was originally set by composer Jacopo Peri during the Carnival of 1597 at the Palazzo Corsi, the home of the wealthy merchant and co-composer Jacopo Corsi. This score, while almost entirely lost save six musical excerpts, is marked as the first piece in the lexicon of what is now known as opera today. Of this composition, Rinuccini is quoted as saying ""Dafne", written by me only to show in a simple experiment, una semplice prova, what music could do in our age, was set to music so gracefully by Peri that it pleased incredibly those few who heard it.""Dafne" was originally set as an experiment that derived out of conversations by a group called the Florentine Camerata. The men of the Florentine Camerata sought to revive the classic Greek dramas under the hypothesis that all text was originally sung. From these experiments, stile recitativo, a style of singing that mimics speech, was created.