Peri, Jacopo (1561–1633)

Italian composer who lived in Florence in the service of the Medici. His experimental melodic opera Euridice (1600) established the opera form and influenced Monteverdi. His first opera, Dafne (1597), believed to be the earliest opera, is now lost.

Peri was a pupil of Cristoforo Malvezzi, then became a canon at the church of San Lorenzo at Florence. He was attached to the Medici court from about 1588, and was later appointed their maestro di cappella and chamberlain. He became a member of the progressive artists grouped round Count Giovanni Bardi, with the composers Giulio Caccini, Jacopo Corsi, and Vincenzo Galilei, and the poet Ottavio Rinuccini. In their endeavour to revive Greek drama with the kind of music they imagined to be genuinely Greek, they stumbled on the invention of opera. They discarded counterpoint in favour of melody and expressive harmony. Peri, with Caccini, experimented in musical declamation to a suitable accompaniment, and they thus became the earliest composers of recitative. They may also be considered the world's first operatic composers.

Works Opera and stage Dafne (1598), Euridice (1600), Tetide (1608), Adone (1611); tournament with music La precedenza delle dame (1625); parts of operas (with others), including La guerra d'amore and Flora (with Gagliano); several ballets.

Vocal Lamento d'Iole for soprano and instruments, madrigals, sonnets, and arias in Songbook (1609).