Jacopo Corsi

Jacopo Corsi (17 July 1561 – 29 December 1602) was an Italian composer of the late Renaissance and early Baroque and one of Florence’s leading patrons of the arts, after only the Medicis. His best-known work is Dafne (1597/98), whose score he wrote in collaboration with Jacopo Peri. Six fragments of the score have survived, two by Corsi and four by Peri. The libretto, by Ottavio Rinuccini, has survived intact. Despite priority quibbles at the time, Dafne is generally accepted as the first opera. TOC Life Born into a Florentine noble family on 17 July 1561, he was the son of Giovanni Corsi (1519–1571) and Alessandra Della Gherardesca (d. 1615). His father was an important merchant who expanded the family activities in Palermo and was also in charge of Cardinal Ferdinando I de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany. In 1569, Giovanni provided important services to the Cardinal but died early in 1571, leaving Jacopo, who was only 10 years old, to be raised by his uncle Antonio with a great inheritance of 90,000 ducats. Jacopo and his brothers Bardo and Giulio had good investments in mercantile education, which allowed them to continue managing the legacy left by their father. The private