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 Saigon he leaves Vietnam. Chris and Kim dance to the same song as on their first night ("Last Night of The World"). The scene then cuts to three years later, in 1978. A street parade is taking place in Saigon (since renamed Ho Chi Minh City) to celebrate the third anniversary of the reunification of Vietnam and the defeat of the Americans ("Morning of The Dragon"). Thuy, a commissar in the new Communist government, has ordered his soldiers to look for the still-corrupt Engineer. Thuy orders the Engineer to find Kim and bring her to him. Although the intervening period is