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
Giacomo Puccini of the Manfredi family, Nadia Manfredi, in 2007, Puccini was actually having an affair with Giulia Manfredi, Doria's cousin. Press reports at the time when these documents were discovered alleged that Nadia Manfredi was Puccini's granddaughter, by a son, Antonio Manfredi, born to Giulia. Unlike Wagner and Verdi, Puccini was not active in politics. Puccini biographer Mary Jane Phillips-Matz wrote: "Throughout this entire period [of World War I and its immediate aftermath], Puccini's interest in politics was close to zero, as it had been all his life, so far as one can judge. He seemed almost indifferent to everything from