The history of the name of the apartment Dafne

If you read the myth of Dafne you’ll discover that Apollo desperately felt in love with her. She became like an obsession for him, and indeed Apollo started pursuing her against her will.
Just before she was kissed by him, Daphne begged her river father god for help, who transformed her into a laurel tree.
It has been Apollo’s favorite tree ever since, and he wears its branches as a crown (and we also do this in Italy on special occasions such as graduation).

Jacopo Peri and Ottavio Rinuccini thought of Dafne while composing one of the first works of a new musical genre known as “Opera” for a small number of scholars in Florence between 1594 and 1597.

It was in fact in Florence, at the famous “Camerata de’ Bardi,” that the opera was born.

Rinuccini’s Dafne was probably performed privately on December 26, 1598 at Palazzo Tornabuoni. On that occasion an attempt was made to revive Greek tragedy according to new and revised rules.
The end result was obviously very different from what the ancient Greeks would have done, but at that moment a new form of entertainment was born that served as a “model” for operas for the next 400 years.