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 was composed solely of pantomimic gestures by men seized with cold, and he did not introduce a single usual dance step into it. Initially the dancers of the Paris Opera Ballet were all male. Mademoiselle de la Fontaine (1665–1738) became the first professional ballerina when she danced in the premiere of Lully's ballet "Le Triomphe de l'Amour" on 21 January 1681. Pierre Beauchamps continued to collaborate with Lully at the Paris Opera until Lully's death in 1687. The 18th century saw the creation of an associated school, now referred to as the Paris Opera Ballet School (French: École de Danse