section_path: Opera
section_name: Opera
paragraph_text: Opera
  
  Verismo was a post-Romantic operatic tradition associated with Italian composers such as Pietro Mascagni, Ruggero Leoncavallo, Umberto Giordano, Francesco Cilea and Giacomo Puccini. They sought to bring the naturalism of influential late 19th-century writers such as Émile Zola, Gustave Flaubert and Henrik Ibsen into opera. This new style presented true-to-life drama that featured gritty and flawed lower-class protagonists while some described it as a heightened portrayal of a realistic event. Although an account considered Giuseppe Verdi 's Luisa Miller and La traviata as the first stirrings of the verismo, some claimed that it began in 1890 with the first performance of Mascagni 's Cavalleria rusticana, peaked in the early 1900s. It was followed by Leoncavallo's Pagliacci, which dealt with the themes of infidelity, revenge, and violence.
  
  Verismo also reached Britain where pioneers included the Victorian-era theatrical partnership of the dramatist W. S. Gilbert and the composer Arthur Sullivan (1842–1900). Specifically, their play Iolanthe is considered a realistic representation of the nobility although it included fantastical elements.