Abstract
<jats:p>It is safe to assume that anyone who appreciates music and drama is familiar with the operas of Giuseppe Verdi and Richard Wagner. There is also litle doubt that both rank among the most important composers in the history of music. The two were born in 1813: Verdi on October 10 in Le Roncole, a village near Busse-to in the Italian province of Parma, and Wagner slightly earlier, on May 22, in Leipzig, then part of the Kingdom of Saxony. While Verdi died in 1901 at the age of 88 in Lombardy, which borders his native Emilia-Romagna, Wagner passed away suddenly in 1883 at the age of 69, a bit farther from Germany, having spent that summer with his wife, Cosima, the daughter of Franz Liszt, in a beautiful palazzo on Venice’s Grand Canal.</jats:p>