an Italian composer of the early Baroque era. He was important in the early history of opera and the development of the solo and concerted madrigal. Gagliano wrote an enormous quantity of music, both sacred and secular, for the Medici, and in addition he was a singer and instrumentalist who entertained them privately. His works include fourteen published operas of which two survive, La Flora (1628) set to a libretto by Andrea Salvadori and La Dafne (1608). La Dafne was praised as the best setting of the libretto by Rinuccini—even by Jacopo Peri, the first to write an opera on the text.
