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Giuseppe Verdi and Richard Wagner, the two men who dominated and occupied opposite poles in the development of opera in Europe from the 1840s to the 1890s, were both born in the same year. Wagner was seen as the man of the future, Verdi as a reactionary, yet Verdi also advanced the form of opera into a more seamless kind of continuous drama, rather than a succession of set pieces broken up by recitatives. Verdi's timing was excellent. His operas began to appear in 1840, not too long after the retirement of Rossini and the death of Bellini, and his fame began to peak at about the time Donizetti's health began to fade, all of which left a vacuum of genius-level Italian opera composers. Furthermore, even his name was well-timed. Much of Italy was dominated by Austria. After Verdi's name began to be known (and his hymn of captive Hebrews in Nabucco was correctly perceived as a disguised plea for Italian independence), Italian patriots would write "VERDI" as a graffito on a wall. If caugh...