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
Opera the 19th century was Ferenc Erkel, whose works mostly dealt with historical themes. Among his most often performed operas are "Hunyadi László" and "Bánk bán". The most famous modern Hungarian opera is Béla Bartók's "Duke Bluebeard's Castle". Stanisław Moniuszko's opera "Straszny Dwór" (in English "The Haunted Manor") (1861–64) represents a nineteenth-century peak of Polish national opera. In the 20th century, other operas created by Polish composers included "King Roger" by Karol Szymanowski and "Ubu Rex" by Krzysztof Penderecki. The first known opera from Turkey (the Ottoman Empire) was "Arshak II", which was an Armenian opera composed by an ethnic Armenian