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 Awards Paris Opera Awards The Paris Opera Awards (POA) is an international contest for opera singers held in Paris, France. It is held under the patronage of the French representation at the European Commission. The first edition of POA was launched in March 2012. It allowed seventy-eight opera singers from South Africa, Albania, Germany, Argentina, Armenia, Austria, Australia, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Georgia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, Poland, the Czech Republic, the United Kingdom, the United States, Russia, Switzerland, Ukraine and Uruguay to participate. The fifty best results were reviewed by the panel of judges. The ten finalists (five