Italian opera revisited, history was retold and imagination was stimulated. The strength of it fell into a more violent era for opera: verismo, with "Cavalleria rusticana" by Pietro Mascagni and "Pagliacci" by Ruggero Leoncavallo. Some of the greatest Italian operas of the 20th century were written by Giacomo Puccini (1858–1924). These include "Manon Lescaut", "La bohème", "Tosca", "Madama Butterfly", "La fanciulla del West", "La rondine" and "Turandot", the last two being left unfinished. In 1926 and in 2002 Franco Alfano and Luciano Berio respectively attempted a completion of "Turandot", and in 1994 Lorenzo Ferrero completed the orchestration of the third version of
Cavalleria rusticana in Chicago on 30 September 1891. The opera premiered in New York on 1 October 1891, with two rival performances on the same day: an afternoon performance at the Casino, directed by Rudolph Aronson, and an evening performance at the Lenox Lyceum, directed by Oscar Hammerstein. The opera received its first performance at the Metropolitan Opera on 30 December 1891 in a double bill with a fragment of Gluck's "Orfeo ed Euridice", and has since received over 700 performances there. Before the action takes place, the young villager Turiddu had returned from military service to find that his fiancée Lola