Through the desire to recapture the grandeur of classic Greek tragedies, another classic art form was born. Italian composer and singer Jacop Peri believed that contemporary art was inferior to Greek tragedies. He was part of a group of like-minded artists that wanted to revive them.

In order to mirror the Greek "choruses" he decided to have the action of the play sung instead of spoken. Peri composed the music for what is now considered the first opera and asked poet Ottavio Rinuccini to supply the text for it. Daphne was their creation and it was performed privately in 1597 in the Palazzo Corsi at Florence. Unfortunately, Daphne has been lost through the ages, but a later work by Peri, Euridice, written in 1600 has survived. It is occasionally still performed in of honor of the composers. Opera has changed over time, but still has its roots in honoring Greek dramas.

Another Great Mind of opera -- Richard Wagner -- greatly influenced modern opera. He brought 'big' to the art form.

When we think of opera today, we think of big voices often sending shockwaves of sound into the audience. We also think of dramatic musical scores. The strong operatic voices of today evolved because Wagner added more emphasis to the instruments used in the orchestra -- therefore he demanded vocalists with much stronger voices.

Perhaps he brought so much 'big' to opera because he was a man of big ideas. After only six months of formal music education Wagner wrote two well-received symphonies and began work on an opera. Meanwhile, he took various conducting posts with small companies as he built his style that eventually led to his revered musical dramas such as Tristan and Isolde.

Wagner literally became a starving artist as he worked to achieve his artistic vision. He envisioned artists from different genres working as a team to create the perfect opera. Wagner coined the term gesamptkunstwerk, which is a German term for "total art."

This "total art" included music, poetry, and dance or mime, and the physical arts of painting, sculpture, and architecture. He intended gesamtkunstwerk to take the sincerity and importance of the folk tale and instill it with nationalist ideas of his time. Wagner wanted to bring all of the art forms together in meaningful and beautiful productions.

The culmination of his ideals was his opera The Ring. Wagner dedicated the final years of his life to the completion of this huge project that included what he believed to be the finest forms of physical art, innovative melody, ambitious orchestration, creative instrumentation, drama, and intriguing sets. Like opera's Peri, his concept hearkened back to ancient Greek themes: an orchestral, vocal, and theatrical portrayal of the struggle between mythological gods and humans for control of earth.

This recreation of ancient Greek ideas took much more than eight minutes -- the drama was presented over three consecutive days as a series of four operas. He even decided to build what he considered the best operatic theater for its performance.

Wagner believed so deeply in his creative vision and in attempting to do so, influenced an entire art form. He aptly said, "Imagination creates reality."