One Night of Love in his usual place in the prompter's box. The complete proscenium and part of the wings and seating plan of the Metropolitan Opera House were duplicated for this production and occupied the whole of Columbia's largest sound stage. Moore's recording and performance of the "Un bel di" aria from "Madame Butterfly" did not go smoothly, as she had trouble hitting the high notes. According to a later biography, she flew into a rage and blamed the orchestra, however, when studio boss Harry Cohn asked Columbia music director, Morris Stoloff, what the problem was, Stoloff replied, "There's nothing wrong with the
Giacomo Puccini the top ten works performed, and Puccini ranks third (behind Verdi and Mozart) in the number of performances of his operas over all. Gustav Kobbé, the original author of "The Complete Opera Book", a standard reference work on opera, wrote in the 1919 edition: "Puccini is considered the most important figure in operatic Italy today, the successor of Verdi, if there is any." Other contemporaries shared this view. Italian opera composers of the generation with whom Puccini was compared included Pietro Mascagni (1863–1945), Ruggero Leoncavallo (1857–1919), Umberto Giordano (1867–1948), Francesco Cilea (1866–1950), Baron Pierantonio Tasca (1858–1934), Gaetano Coronaro (1852–1908), and