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
Arrigo Pola next three years in the Philippines. Among the roles Pola sang with the Manila Opera were Canio in "Pagliacci", Manrico in "Il trovatore", Rodolfo in "La bohème", and Turiddu in "Cavalleria rusticana". In 1954, Pola returned to Italy with the hopes of reviving his opera career in Italy; an attempt which never gained much momentum. That year, he was approached by a baker named Fernando Pavarotti who wanted to know whether the tenor voice of his 19-year-old son, Luciano, was good enough for training as a professional opera singer. Pola later reported that he knew, after an approximately 15-minute audition,