Giacomo Puccini line. "Verismo" is a style of Italian opera that began in 1890 with the first performance of Mascagni's "Cavalleria rusticana", peaked in the early 1900s, and lingered into the 1920s. The style is distinguished by realistic – sometimes sordid or violent – depictions of everyday life, especially the life of the contemporary lower classes. It by and large rejects the historical or mythical subjects associated with Romanticism. "Cavalleria rusticana", "Pagliacci", and "Andrea Chénier" are uniformly considered to be "verismo" operas. Puccini's career as a composer is almost entirely coincident in time with the "verismo" movement. Only his "Le Villi" and
Luis Lima Luis Lima Luis Lima (born 12 September 1948 in Córdoba, Argentina) is an Argentine operatic tenor, who studied in Buenos Aires under Carlos Guichandut and in Sicily under Gina Cigna. He made his opera debut in 1974, in Lisbon, in "Cavalleria rusticana", and since then sang in seventy-seven performances at the Metropolitan Opera (from 1977 to 2001) in nine different roles, starting with Alfredo Germont in "La traviata". He has also sung with the New York City Opera (1978–79, debuting in "Madama Butterfly"), at the Teatro alla Scala (first appearing in "Lucia di Lammermoor", 1977) and the Royal Opera House,