Verismo is a term taken over from Italian literature to describe a style in late 19th-cent. opera which exchanged the former historical and mythological subjects for the everyday life of the lower classes (a parallel can be made with 1950s kitchen-sink drama). The recitatives and arias of earlier opera were abandoned in favour of a freer musical style in which extremes of human behaviour were portrayed with both passion and sentimentality — Amanda Holden