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
Insertion aria engaged by the opera house for the season. A highly regarded singer would not randomly choose arias to insert in whatever opera was to be performed but would make reasoned decisions based on the dramatic context and the compositional style. Poriss tells of the soprano Carolina Ungher's decisions on which aria to insert at the entrance of Elena in Donizetti's "Marino Faliero". For her performance in Florence, May 1836, she inserted the aria "" from Donizetti's "Sancia di Castiglia" for her entrance. Later that year she inserted the aria "" from Donizetti's "Ugo, conte di Parigi". In the fall of