Giacomo Puccini Giacomo Puccini Giacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria Puccini (; 22 December 1858 29 November 1924) was an Italian opera composer who has been called "the greatest composer of Italian opera after Verdi". Puccini's early work was rooted in traditional late-19th-century romantic Italian opera. Later, he successfully developed his work in the realistic "verismo" style, of which he became one of the leading exponents. Puccini's most renowned works are "La bohème" (1896), "Tosca" (1900), "Madama Butterfly" (1904), and "Turandot" (1924), all of which are among the important operas played as standards. Puccini was born Giacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria
Verismo (music) earlier Italian opera. Instead, the operas were "through-composed," with few breaks in a seamlessly integrated sung text. While "verismo" operas may contain arias that can be sung as stand-alone pieces, they are generally written to arise naturally from their dramatic surroundings, and their structure is variable, being based on text that usually does not follow a regular strophic format. The most famous composers who created works in the "verismo" style were Giacomo Puccini, Pietro Mascagni, Ruggero Leoncavallo, Umberto Giordano and Francesco Cilea. There were, however, many other "veristi": Franco Alfano, Alfredo Catalani, Gustave Charpentier ("Louise"), Eugen d'Albert ("Tiefland"), Ignatz Waghalter