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
Cambridge Theatre in 1958, Tommy Steele in "Half a Sixpence" in 1963 (678 performances), Bruce Forsyth in "Little Me" in 1964 (334 performances), "The Black Mikado" (1975–76), and in the late 1970s the Kander and Ebb musical "Chicago" ran for 590 performances. More recently the 'rock'n'roll' musical "Return to the Forbidden Planet", which was based on Shakespeare's "The Tempest" and used 1950s and 1960s songs opened in September 1989 and lasted until early 1993, winning the Olivier Award for Best New Musical—beating the favourite, "Miss Saigon". The controversial show "Jerry Springer - The Opera" had a run from 14 October 2003 –