The development of opera

Although stage plays have been set to music since the era of the ancient Greeks when the dramas of Sophocles and Aeschylus were accompanied by lyres and flutes, the usually accepted date for the beginning of opera as we know it is 1600. As part of the celebration of the marriage of King Henry IV of France to the Italian aristocrat. Maria de Medici, The Florentine composer Jacopo Peri produced his famous Euridice, generally cosidered to be the first opera. Following his example, a group of Italian musicians called the Camerata began to revive the style of musical story that had been used in Greek tragedy.