Literally, "plays of May" the Maggio drammatico refers to medieval musical and dramatic rituals at planting time in central Italy, typical of many

agrarian societies An agrarian society, or agricultural society, is any community whose economy is based on producing and maintaining crops and farmland. Another way to define an agrarian society is by seeing how much of a nation's total production is in agriculture ...

. Their origins, however, are certainly prehistoric. In the case of these central Italian rituals, the combination of song, text and drama has been speculated to be one of the origins of Italian opera, born in the workshops of the

Florentine Camerata The Florentine Camerata, also known as the Camerata de' Bardi, were a group of humanists, musicians, poets and intellectuals in late Renaissance Florence who gathered under the patronage of Count Giovanni de' Bardi to discuss and guide trends in t ...

References

Tullia Magrini (ed.) ''Il maggio drammatico: una tradizione di teatro in musica''. Bo: Edizioni Analisi, 1992; Music of Italy {{music-genre-stub