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
Miss Helyett (opera) "The Era" found the music "light and pretty, though not as lively as might be desired", and thought the plot flimsy but told in humorous style. "The Monthly Musical Record" reported that the piece "flows smoothly and simply but without any great originality". Reviewing the English version, "The Standard" commented that the original French piece was "one of the most gratuitously coarse and offensive plays ever presented" and that Burnand's bowdlerisation of the crux of the plot had produced a piece "equally inoffensive and meaningless"; there was praise for the score: "some extremely bright and pretty music". Miss Helyett (opera)