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
Ľuba Orgonášová in the calm woods surrounding her home near Zurich, Switzerland. In the past few years she has focused mostly on recitals rather than operatic performances. She sang the aria, "Chi il bel sogno di Doretta?", from "La rondine", an opera by Giacomo Puccini, over the closing credits of in "Irregular Around the Margins," the fifty-seventh episode of the HBO original series "The Sopranos." Ľuba Orgonášová Ľubica (Ľuba) Orgonášová ( ] born January 22, 1961) is a Slovak operatic soprano, who is particularly known for her interpretation of Mozart roles. Born in Bratislava, Slovakia to economist and secretary parents who love