Giuseppe Verdi's wife Margherita dies of encephalitis…

Giuseppe Verdi's wife Margherita dies of encephalitis at the age of twenty-six while he is working on his second opera, Un giorno di regno.

Verdi adores his wife and children and is devastated by their deaths.

Un giorno, a comedy, is premiered only a few months later.

It is a flop and only given the one performance.

Following its failure, it is claimed Verdi vowed never to compose again, but in his Sketch he recounts how Bartolomeo Merelli, la Scala's  impresario, had persuaded him to write a new opera.

Verdi will claim that he gradually began to work on the music for Nabucco, the libretto of which had originally been rejected by the composer Otto Nicolai.