Giacomo Puccini "La bohème" was "Tosca" (1900), arguably Puccini's first foray into "verismo", the realistic depiction of many facets of real life including violence. Puccini had been considering an opera on this theme since he saw the play "Tosca" by Victorien Sardou in 1889, when he wrote to his publisher, Giulio Ricordi, begging him to get Sardou's permission for the work to be made into an opera: "I see in this "Tosca" the opera I need, with no overblown proportions, no elaborate spectacle, nor will it call for the usual excessive amount of music." The music of "Tosca" employs musical signatures for
The Phantom of the Opera (1998 film) The Phantom of the Opera (1998 film) The Phantom of the Opera () is a 1998 Italian horror film directed by Dario Argento, adapted from the novel "Le Fantôme de l'Opéra" by Gaston Leroux. However, there are many differences between the book and the film (the biggest being that the Phantom is not disfigured). In Paris 1877 a pack of rats save an abandoned baby from a basket that was flowing along a river. They raise him in the underground of the Opéra de Paris. This child becomes the Phantom of the Opera, a misanthrope who kills anyone who ventures