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