La Dafne

La Dafne (Daphne) is an early Italian opera, written in 1608 by the Italian composer Marco da Gagliano from a libretto by Ottavio Rinuccini. It is described as a favola in musica (fable set to music) composed in one act and a prologue. The opera is based on the myth of Daphne and Apollo as related by Ovid in the first book of the Metamorphoses. An earlier version of the libretto had been set to music in 1597–98 by Jacopo Peri, whose Dafne is generally considered to be the first opera.

Gagliano's opera was first performed at the Ducal Palace, Mantua in late February 1608. It had originally been intended to form part of the wedding celebrations of Prince Francesco Gonzaga of Mantua and Margherita of Savoy, but the arrival of the bride was delayed and the staging was brought forward (Monteverdi's opera L'Arianna was also written for the marriage but not performed until May). A private performance of Dafne was given in Florence at the house of Don Giovanni de' Medici on 9 February 1611. The Medici were the patrons of the Florentine Gagliano and the laurel (into which the heroine of the opera is transformed) was their symbol.

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.

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