 Many writers, including Baldini and Frank Walker, have speculated on supposed relationships which Verdi, a man then close to (and then in) his thirties, might have had (or did have) with women in the years following his first wife's death.However, the only real evidence, visible in Walker's "The Man Verdi" and Baldini's "The Story of Giuseppe Verdi", relates to Giuseppina Strepponi, the singer who Verdi first encountered at the time he was writing "Nabucco" in 1842.She sang the first Abigaille, and continued on and off with that role in spite of her declining voice up to her retirement and move to Paris in October 1846 where she became a singing teacher in November and also planned a concert of Verdi's music for the following June.