After his first attempts ( Le villi, 1884 Edgar, 1889) and first successes ( Manon Lescaut, 1893), he became internationally popular with his most significant and most popular operas, La Boheme (1898), Tosca (1900) and Madam Butterfly (1904). Since he possessed much sense for opera theatre, Puccini dedicated himself exclusively to opera compositions. He graduated from the Milan Conservatory, where he studied composition with Bazzini and Ponchielli at the time, Ponchielli was famous for his opera La Gioconda. Puccini was born in Lucca, a small town in Tuscany, on 22 December 1858. Puccini did that by modifying, to some extent, basic rules of verismo aesthetics. Although their works had much success and made significant influence to European opera at the end of XIX and beginning of XX century, Mascagni and Leoncavallo did not raise verismo style to universal significance. Only Mascagni in Cavalleria Rusticana and Leoncavallo in Pagliacci accomplished pure verismo. Italian ‘realistic’ verismo style, with its dramatic scenes from people’s lives, without fine psychological analysis, musically unsystematic and random, with extreme fluctuations between lyric and brutal effects, was a reaction to Wagner’s influence, which in Italy could be partly observed in Verdi’s Othello and especially in Mephistopheles by Arrigo Boito. It was quite natural that reaction to Wagner’s principles occurred in Italy where, due to exceptionally strong opera tradition, Wagner’s influence was least appreciated. There are numerous undistinguished imitators of Wagner, composers of lesser talent, in all European countries, especially in Germany, who composed long and boring pieces, completely forgotten today, who brought Wagner’s principles to absurdity. Wagner’s musical and drama works made the greatest influence in the history of music. Nonetheless, as doubtlessly the greatest musical dramatist, Richard Wagner is at the centre of musical and drama creation of XIX century. Besides Mascagni and Leoncavallo, Giacomo Puccini (1858–1924) was one of representatives of the Italian verismo style, although with certain limitations. When we talk about Italian verismo style, we have to observe musical and drama works of XIX century.
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