Giacomo Puccini Because only three "verismo" works by Puccini continue to appear regularly on stage (the aforementioned "Cavalleria rusticana", "Pagliacci", and "Andrea Chénier"), Puccini's contribution has had lasting significance to the genre. Both during his lifetime and in posterity, Puccini's success outstripped other Italian opera composers of his time, and he has been matched in this regard by only a handful of composers in the entire history of opera. Eleven of Puccini's operas are numbered among the 200 most-performed operas (worldwide, by composers of any nationality, as surveyed by Operabase). Three of his works ("La bohème", "Tosca", and "Madama Butterfly") rank among
Phantom of the Opera (1976 musical) Phantom of the Opera (1976 musical) Phantom of the Opera is a 1976 musical with book and lyrics by Ken Hill. It is the first musical adaptation of the novel "The Phantom of the Opera" by Gaston Leroux, about the hideously disfigured Phantom's amorous obsession with the magnificent, naïve singer, Christine. Hill wrote the original English lyrics to the music of Verdi, Gounod, Offenbach, Mozart, Weber, Donizetti, and Boito. Hill’s "Phantom of the Opera" was the first musical version of the story by Gaston Leroux and has enjoyed financial success. Hill's musical inspired the award-winning Andrew Lloyd Webber musical version