death_date death_place birth_place birth_date image article_title name occupation
12 august 1633 florence , italy rome , italy 20 august 1561 image : jacopo peri 1.jpg jacopo peri
 jacopo peri italian composer and singer
jacopo peri

jacopo peri -lrb- zazzerino -rrb- -lrb- 20 august 1561 -- 12 august 1633 -rrb- was an italian composer and singer of the transitional period between the renaissance and baroque styles , and is often called the inventor of opera .
he wrote the first work to be called an opera today , `` dafne '' -lrb- around 1597 -rrb- , and also the first opera to have survived to the present day , `` euridice '' -lrb- 1600 -rrb- .
peri was born in rome , but studied in florence with cristofano malvezzi , and went on to work in a number of churches there , both as an organist and as a singer .
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 , `` intermedi '' and madrigals .
in the 1590s , peri became associated with jacopo corsi , the leading patron of music in florence .
they believed contemporary art was inferior to classical greek and roman works , and decided to attempt to recreate greek tragedy , as they understood it .
their work added to that of the florentine camerata of the previous decade , which produced the first experiments in monody , the solo song style over continuo bass which eventually developed into recitative and aria .
peri and corsi brought in the poet ottavio rinuccini 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 the first work in a new form , opera .
rinuccini and peri next collaborated on `` euridice '' .
this was first performed on 6 october 1600 at the palazzo pitti .
unlike `` dafne '' , it has survived to the present day -lrb- though it is hardly ever staged , and then only as an historical curio -rrb- .
the work made use of recitatives , a new development which went between the arias and choruses and served to move the action along .
peri produced a number of other operas , often in collaboration with other composers -lrb- such as `` la flora '' with marco da gagliano -rrb- , and also wrote a number of other pieces for various court entertainments .
few of his pieces are still performed today , and even by the time of his death his operatic style was looking rather old-fashioned when compared to the work of relatively younger reformist composers such as claudio monteverdi .
peri 's influence on those later composers , however , was large .
