After the completion and premiere of his opera "Aida" in December 1871, Verdi decided that it was time for him to end his successful career as a composer of opera, much as Rossini had done after the completion of the opera "William Tell", though he was easily the most popular, and possibly the wealthiest, composer in Italy at the time. However, Verdi's sixties were not good years: as musicologist Julian Budden notes, "he seemed to have entered years in a mood of gloom and depression [..and..] his letters at the time were full of complaints about the Italian theatre, Italian politics and Italian music in general seen by him as sinking beneath a tide of Germanism".