After five unhappy years in a town where he was little appreciated, Verdi returned to Milan. His first opera, "Oberto," is chiefly indebted to Bellini, and the next, "Un Giorno di Regno" (which fulfilled its own title, as it was only once performed), has been styled "Un Bazar de Reminiscences." Poor Verdi had just lost his wife and two children within a few days of each other, so it is hardly to be wondered at that a comic opera was not a very congenial work, nor successfully accomplished. "Nabucodonosor" (1842) was his first hit, and in the next year "I Lombardi" was even more successful--partly owing to the revolutionary feeling which in no small degree was to help him to his future high position. Indeed, his name was a useful acrostic to the revolutionary party, who shouted "Viva Verdi," when they meant "Viva Vittorio Emanuele Re D' Italia." "Ernani," produced at Venice in 1844, also scored a success, owing to the republican sentiment in the libretto, which was adapted from Victor Hugo's "Hernani." Many works followed in quick succession, each arousing the enthusiasm of the audiences, chiefly when an opportunity was afforded them of expressing their feelings against the Austrian rule. Only with his sixteenth opera did Verdi win the supremacy when there were no longer any living competitors; and "Rigoletto" (1851), "Il Trovatore," and "La Traviata" (1853) must be called the best, as they are the last of the Italian opera school. "I Vespri Siciliani" (1855) and "Simon Boccanegra" (1857) were not so successful as "Un Ballo in Maschera" (1859); and none of them, any more than "La Forza del Destino" (1862) or "Don Carlos" (1867), added anything to the fame of the composer of "Il Trovatore." Only now begins the interest which the student of musical history finds in Verdi's life. Hitherto he had proved a good man, struggling with adversity and poverty, a successful composer ambitious to succeed to the vacant throne of Italian opera. But the keen insight into dramatic necessity which had gradually developed and had given such force to otherwise unimportant scenes in earlier operas, also showed him the insufficiency of the means hitherto at the disposal of Italian composers, and from time to time he had tried to learn the lessons taught in the French Grand Opera School, but with poor success. Now a longer interval seemed to promise a more careful, a more ambitious work, and when "Aïda" was produced at Cairo (1871), it was at once acknowledged that a revolution had taken place in Verdi's mind and method, which might produce still greater results. The influence of Wagner and the music-drama is distinctly to be felt.