might be presented as a four-part metaphor of time passing in the play. This stage begins with Il commodo, from the Medici wedding in Florence of Cosimo I and Eleanor of Toledo in 1539, where the four parts were morning, noon, afternoon, and night, represented with an elaborate mechanical artificial sun, with singing and dancing appropriate to each time. Some critics of the time noted that the intermedi had become so elaborate that the play had begun to serve as intermedi to the intermedi. Mature intermedio Originally intermedi had used the sets already on the stage from the main play, typically fairly simple ones for a comedy, with a few extra pieces, but later they had their own sets, which a mythological subject required to be more elaborate. Vasari's production for yet another Medici wedding in 1565 "embodied stupendous advances in engineering technique" with all the elaborate movements of scenery done without a curtain in full view of the audience. According to Roy Strong: "the designs for the 1589 intermezzi are crucial, for they are the earliest mass-disseminated illustrations of what became a norm throughout Europe for theatrical visual experience for the next three hundred years, the proscenium arch behind which receded ranks of side wings, the vista closed by a back-shutter." Eventually the form acquired a tradition and cohesiveness that allowed it to stand on its own, and it was thus a logical development to combine the existing features with sung, acted parts, and be absorbed into the new artform of opera, which also drew from the traditions of monody and madrigal comedy. Jacopo Peri, the composer of Dafne, the first opera, was one of the composers, and almost certainly performers, in the 1589 Medici intermezzi, and the librettist for both, Ottavio Rinuccini, seems to have recycled in Dafne some of the material from the 1589 Delos scene (illustrated at top). "Festival books", produced as souvenirs of lavish festivities, contain detailed descriptions of many important intermedi, such as those for the Medici wedding of 1589, for which 286 costumes were made. Although music written specially for this occasion survives (see discography below), this is usually not the case, and music written for other occasions, for example madrigals and instrumental pieces, was often used in intermedi. The subject matter of the intermedio was usually a mythological or pastoral story, which could be told in mime, by costumed singers or actors,