Jacopo di Antoni di Franceso Peri was born in either Rome or Florence to a middle-class family. Peri himself claimed to be from Rome, but considering the pro-Roman sentiments of the reigning
Fernando de'Medici, it was a disadvantage to be known as a Florentine, which may have motivated Peri to lie about his true birthplace. Nonetheless, he was employed to sing at the Servite monastery of
SS. Annunziata in the city of Florence. He likely received an education from the monastery school as well. Due to its size and favour with the Medici court, who attended mass each week, SS. Annunziata was a pipeline for many musical students into musical careers. Because of his talent and education, Peri was able to study 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 around September 1588, 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, 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 for the wedding of Princess
Marie de' Medici and
Henry IV. Unlike
Dafne, it has survived to the present day (though it is hardly ever staged, and then only as a historical curio). 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 (such as
La Flora with
Marco da Gagliano), 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. ==Works==