Marco da Gagliano

After study with a religious confraternity and Luca Bati, he was employed for six years from 1602 by the church of San Lorenzo as a singing instructor.

In 1607, he went to Mantua, where he wrote music for the Gonzaga family, including his impressive operatic setting of La Dafne.

In 1609, he returned to Florence to become maestro di cappella at the Compagnia dell'Arcangelo Raffaello, the organisation from which he had received his boyhood musical training.

Gagliano wrote an enormous quantity of music, both sacred and secular, for the Medici; in addition, he was a singer and instrumentalist who entertained them privately.

Meanwhile, Gagliano or somebody else revised Rinuccini's poetry for the libretto so extensively that in some places it is impossible to find traces of the original.