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
Paris Opera Ballet press as "the lost generation" of dancers working up the ranks who have become soloist (Sujet) but have been unlucky for years as far as climbing up the last step of the career ladder is concerned. The Paris Opera Ballet School has churned out some of the most famous dancers of all time, such as Sylvie Guillem and Laurent Hilaire. Yet Sylvie Guillem, being principal dancer since 1984, left the company in 1989 at the age of 24 because she wanted more freedom, the right to perform with other companies, an arrangement the management of the Paris Opera Ballet declined.