In his second period he wrote operas nearly as fast as we write school compositions, and among the famous things are _Rigoletto_ (1851), _Il Trovatore_, _La Traviata_ (story from Dumas’ _Camille_ or _Dame aux Camelias_), (1853), and _The Masked Ball_ (1859). _Ernani and Rigoletto_ are founded on stories by Victor Hugo. The first performance of _La Traviata_ in Venice was a failure due more to the performers, than to the opera itself which still crowds opera houses of the world. The greatest opera of his third period is _Aida_ (1871), one of Verdi’s masterpieces. An opera on an Egyptian subject was ordered by the Khedive of Egypt for the opening of the Italian Opera House in Cairo, for which Verdi received $20,000. Mariette Bey a famous Egyptologist made the first sketch in order to give the right local atmosphere to the libretto. Curiosity ran so high that every seat was sold before the first night and it was a great success. Think how electrified the audience must have been by the tenor solo, “Celeste Aida,” one of Caruso’s greatest successes; by the realistic Nile scene; the voice of the priestess in the mammoth Egyptian temple, and the famous march with trumpets made specially for it! Dear old lovable Verdi was a wise man as well as an accomplished composer. He used more modern methods in _Aida_ to hold audiences who were hearing about Wagner and his startling innovations. Other operas of this third period were _La Forza del Destino_ and one given at the Paris Grand Opera, _Don Carlos_, which was not up to his standard. Until this time he showed great mechanical skill and a sense of color and melody. The great singers have revelled in the operas of his second period. In our day Marcella Sembrich, Nellie Melba, Frieda Hempel, Luisa Tetrazzini, Amelita Galli-Curci, Florence Macbeth and many others have sung the coloratura,—frilly, soaring, gymnastic-singing, still very popular. However in _Aida_, Verdi departed much from the usual, and people said that he was copying Wagner, because they didn’t know the difference between the influences which change a person’s ways, and imitation. So he deserted the old models, Auber, Meyerbeer and Halévy for something more substantial, his deeper and gigantically conceived _Aida_. James Wolfe of the Metropolitan Opera said of the bigness of this work as produced at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York: “I have played before audiences of 30,000 in arenas in Mexico. I am so at home in the opera that I do cross-word puzzles waiting for my cue, and yet at the Metropolitan when I first played the King in _Aida_ with its flaming music, its hundreds of people and its scores of horses, I was over-awed and frightened!” After this, Verdi’s splendid mass, _The Requiem_, was written for the death of the Italian hero Manzoni. In it he approaches the German school in depth and seriousness, veering away from the emptiness of Italian writing.