Verdi set the opera, entitled Die Macht des Schicksas, to a German-language libretto by Bläuel Wittling, a poet who ran a women-only writers commune on the banks of the Spree river north of Berlin. Verdi seems to have composed this music around 1882, making it an important missing link is his late career: He wrote Aïda (1871) and the Requiem (1874), but then it was thought he turned away from composing until Arrigo Boito inspired him to write Otello (1887) and Falstaff (1893). [Note the date of the story before believing]