Opera History

Up to this day, specialists still have ongoing discussion trying to understand who invented opera. With some certainty we can say that the history of opera started the end of 16th century.  The birth of the opera was the result of curious discussions among the tight circle of Florentine elite himanists known as “Camerata de’Bardi”.  They were trying to revive the best traditions of the antiquity which was so characteristic at the times of the Renaissance.  Humanists attached great importance to classical Greek drama but they did not really know the way it was performed in the ancient times.

For some reason, probably, under the influence of the famous scholar Girolamo Mei, they decided that ancient Greeks sang rather than spoke the verses during drama performance. Mei was considered an expert of ancient Greece at the times, so he easily convinced the others that ancient Greeks not only sang the chorus part but also entire text of all roles.  This movement of “returning back to the roots” made composer Jacopo Perri create first opera Daphne around 1597. It is lost to us, but his next creation – opera Euridice, written around 1600,  survivied to the present day.

No matter what we may think of this attempt, during the development of both operas Peri invented first recitatives and arias that instantly became the integral part of the play. The star of Jacopo Peri quickly dimmed while the fame of a new opera composer Claudio Monteverdi was on the rise.  The latter’s opera L’Orfeo created in 1607 is still regularly performed and mistakenly presented as the first opera up to this day.