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
Aria di sorbetto Aria di sorbetto The Aria di sorbetto, or "sherbet aria", was a convention of Italian opera in the early nineteenth century. Nineteenth-century audiences would rarely listen to an opera straight through, preferring instead to talk among themselves, eat, and drink for much of the performance. The "aria di sorbetto" would come fairly late in the second act of the opera, and it would afford vendors the chance to hawk their wares one last time before the evening ended. As most of the vendors sold Sorbetto (a Sorbet) and Gelato (an ice cream) and other sweets, such arias came to be