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. Life Born in a Florentine noble family on 17 July 1561, he was the son of Giovanni Corsi (1519-1571) and Alessandra Della Gherardesca (X-1615). His father was an important merchant that expanded the family activities in Palermo and who also was 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 Mercantil education, which allowed them to continue managing the legacy left by their father. The private tutor of Jacopo and his brothers was Ser Francesco Olmi, who in time became the family's fullest confidence. They also had classes with the experienced musician madrigalist Luca Bati, being the first Florentine musician to be paid for fixed tutoring (3 ducats monthly for each child). Bati taught Jacopo and his brothers to sing, play the piano and music theory. He became the main administrator of family finances in 1582, and redecorated the Corsi Palace, spending almost 300 ducats on a new carriage and other accessories. In 1586 he lost one of his brothers, Giulio Corsi, who died in Madrid, spending many ducats for the exhumation of the body to Florence so that he could be buried in his family's tomb. In 1586, together with his brother Bardo, he bought Villa Montughi for 5,500 ducats from the bankrupt heirs of Bernardo di Niccolò Soderini and lost his uncle, Antonio Corsi, who had raised him in childhood, spending almost 1,500 ducats on a pompous and expensive funeral. He also made major investments in the silk market, which made the Corsi one of the wealthiest families in the early 1600s. He first married Settimia Bandini in Rome in 1591, the daughter of