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
Julianna Di Giacomo made her debut with the New York Philharmonic as the soprano soloist in Beethoven's "Symphony No. 9"; a work she had performed a year earlier with the Vienna Philharmonic. Also in 2014, she made her debut at the San Francisco Opera as Amelia in "Un ballo in maschera", appeared at the Hollywood Bowl as Nedda in "Pagliacci" with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and portrayed Desdemona in "Otello" at the Teatro Massimo. In May 2015 Di Giacomo portrayed the title role in Verdi's "Luisa Miller" at the Teatro di San Carlo. In June 2015 she portrayed Leonora for her debut with