Italian opera revisited, history was retold and imagination was stimulated. The strength of it fell into a more violent era for opera: verismo, with "Cavalleria rusticana" by Pietro Mascagni and "Pagliacci" by Ruggero Leoncavallo. Some of the greatest Italian operas of the 20th century were written by Giacomo Puccini (1858–1924). These include "Manon Lescaut", "La bohème", "Tosca", "Madama Butterfly", "La fanciulla del West", "La rondine" and "Turandot", the last two being left unfinished. In 1926 and in 2002 Franco Alfano and Luciano Berio respectively attempted a completion of "Turandot", and in 1994 Lorenzo Ferrero completed the orchestration of the third version of
Robert Alfano meetings and conferences for OSA and SPIE, and later co-chairing many optical imaging conferences with Britton Chance, whereby he introduced young scientists and engineers to biomedical optics, and attracted other researchers to the field. In addition to his faculty position as a Distinguished Professor at the City College and Graduate School of New York, Alfano has held, or currently holds, a number of directorship positions: Alfano notes that he attended college mainly because his father thought it was important (though his parents hadn't had such advantage). Alfano chose Fairleigh Dickinson University because it was close to his childhood home in