Opera After Verdi, the sentimental "realistic" melodrama of verismo appeared in Italy. This was a style introduced by Pietro Mascagni's "Cavalleria rusticana" and Ruggero Leoncavallo's "Pagliacci" that came to dominate the world's opera stages with such popular works as Giacomo Puccini's "La bohème", "Tosca", and "Madama Butterfly". Later Italian composers, such as Berio and Nono, have experimented with modernism. The first German opera was "Dafne", composed by Heinrich Schütz in 1627, but the music score has not survived. Italian opera held a great sway over German-speaking countries until the late 18th century. Nevertheless, native forms would develop in spite of this
19th-century French literature peasant stories of George Sand, and concerned itself with historical forces and periods, as in the work of historian Jules Michelet. The novels of Stendhal, including "The Red and the Black" and "The Charterhouse of Parma", address issues of their contemporary society while also using themes and characters derived from the romantic movement. Honoré de Balzac is the most prominent representative of 19th century realism in fiction. His "La Comédie humaine", a vast collection of nearly 100 novels, was the most ambitious scheme ever devised by a writer of fiction—nothing less than a complete contemporary history of his countrymen. Realism