Which Was The First Music Opera?

From an etymology standpoint, the term music opera in and of itself is derived from Latin and is the plural of the word “opus”, meaning a work that is closely that is often related to art, or in musical terms a series of works of music that signifies the sequence of the publications of a composer.

As for the beginnings of music opera, the first ever composition that was considered compatible with what was later formed the basis of the composing method for the genre was Dafne by Jacopo Peri, which seems to have been written sometime between 1594 and 1597, and even though it is been credited to Peri, out of its six excerpts that persist nowadays, two are credited to another composer Jacopo Corsi. It is scored for a small scale musical ensemble, that being a lute, an archlute, a triple flute, a harpsichord and a viol, and it premiered in 1598 as part of the Carnival of Florence at Palazzo Corsi, Jacopo Corsi’s house.

That early opera form is a telling of the myth of Apollo falling in love with the nymph Daphne, and as a modernistic work, features, for what could possibly be the first time, a delivery method called “recitativo” or recitative, which enables the opera performers to integrate the patterns of regular speech into song, which largely used in the operas to follow, and formed the basis of the operas of the famous composer Claudio Monteverdi.